Strip Material Tension Leveler

This package consists of drives and controls for a new tension leveler. This tension leveler accommodates copper, brass and stainless steel strip material from a minimum size of 0.0016” thick x 1.6” wide up to a maximum size of 0.0032” thick x 2” wide with a maximum line speed of 500 fpm and is comprised of six sections as follows:

Unwinder

Pulls raw strip material from a roll and is controlled by a pneumatic drag brake. It has a manually controlled pressure regulator and a gauge to set and adjust the brake tension from the operator's control panel.

Tension Rolls

Controlled by a 15HP DURApulse GS3 AC vector drive (and an associated GS AC Line Reactor) along with a Marathon Black Max 15HP Inverter-duty AC motor and encoder. The drive provides holdback torque with a regenerative module for the leveler and was supplied with a disc brake for emergency stopping.

Leveler

Unpowered and independent of the controls.

Skiver

Unpowered and independent of the controls.

Drive Rolls

Controlled by a 15HP DURApulse GS3 AC vector drive (and an associated GS AC Line Reactor) along with a Marathon Black Max 15HP Inverter-duty AC motor and encoder with a disc brake for emergency stopping.

Rewinder

Controlled by a 5HP DURApulse GS3 AC vector drive (and an associated GS AC Line Reactor) along with a Marathon Black Max 5HP Inverter-duty AC motor and encoder. The Rewinder provides speed-coordinated rewinding of the finished strip material. This sub-system includes a speed-taper algorithm to adjust drive speed as the rewind-coil diameter grows. In addition, a pneumatic slip clutch arrangement, located on the mandrel, compensates for slight errors in the rewinder speed. A manually controlled pressure regulator & gauge sets and adjusts the slip-clutch tension from the operator control panel.

A DL405 PLC plus associated I/O modules handled the discrete I/O and speed feedback for the system PID control.