Gram Equipment - including the now merged WCB Ice Cream - manufactures machinery for volume production of ice cream to the entire world, including Japan . The Japanese prefer technology they know , therefore there is Mitsubishi industrial electronics from Hans Følsgaard AS in the MLPH machine that will soon make ice lollies for the Japanese market.
The Japanese prefer Mitsubishi's technology
Now, can you really sell ice cream to an eskimo? Or even Japanese industrial electronics to the Japanese? Well, the answer is actually “yes” on both occasions. Though the Arctic people’s passion for ice cream may be debatable, the Japanese on the other hand has an ice cold attitude towards technology. They want what they know, and they also are remarkably loyal to their suppliers. This is why the Japanese prefers Mitsubishi’s PLCs, interfaces and drives in the machines for ice cream manufacturing in the machines supplied by Gram Equipment – previously known as WCB Ice Cream in Århus, the second largest Danish city.
This is indeed good news for Hans Følsgaard A/S, the Danish distributor of Mitsubishi’s industrial electronics and automation products. Even though a products quality is way above par compared to the competing brands, it’s always hard work to make a client change from one brand to the other, but as the Japanese end user – is this case the Japanese division of the ice cream manufacturer Häagen-Dazs – insists on using Mitsubishi-products, it’s both an great opportunity and a bit of a technological challenge for both Gram Equipment and Hans Følsgaard.
If we are to believe René Sørensen, who is heading the development team at Gram Equipment, the Japanese are concerning customers. They will always want well-known products, and they are reassuringly fuzzy about high quality. This has put Japanese technology to the high level they’ve accomplished through decades of technological development. But the Japanese are also extremely loyal towards their suppliers, and it’s rare to see Japanese companies “shop around” among suppliers. Once a cooperation is established, formalities are put right, and the business-relationship will continue on a very honest level for many years.
It’s nothing new for Gram Equipment to sell ice cream manufacturing equipment – not even to the Japanese market. The Danish has done so for many years under the previous name and with various drives and controls. The introduction of a new machine, the MLPH – multi-lane product handler – to the Japanese customer however demanded a change to the Mitsubishi drives and PLCs which was quite an exciting task for the development team at Gram Equipment.
”We haven’t implemented Mitsubishi’s products before, which is why we’ve included a specialist in the team, Morten Rønberg, who has more than two decades of experience with industrial Mitsubishi products. The combination of Morten Rønberg deep knowledge about the practical issues and the support from Hans Følsgaard has been very helpful, as it always requires more work when you switch from one brand to another in the heart of your controls” René Sørensen explains.
8-axis and 9,600 ice cream sticks per hour
The MLPH-machine will at Häagen-Dazs in Japan be situated in a line that also includes a Gram Equipment/WCB Ice Cream LIFE-extruder transforming the mellow ice cream to stick-shapes - without the chocolate coating – an inline-freezer and a wrapper. The MLPH picks up the ice cream sticks in twelve parallel lines and dips them twice in molten chocolate with quick deep freeze in between in a nitrogenous atmosphere.
This is not as easy as it sounds, as the machines also needs to be designed to cope with very aggressive cleansing-processes including alkaline cleaning agents as demanded in the food- and drug-industries. The clever design of the mechanical parts of the machine certainly aids the highest level of hygiene, but the drives and electronics have to be in an IP-class that accommodates the very intensive and frequent cleaning.
The MLPH has a layout as a conveyor that feeds – or indexes – an array of clamps grouped in 3 x 4 abreast. The conveyor occupies one of the drives. The rather clever machinery includes to arm-like handlers in either end – each equipped with twelve pneumatic grippers that pick up and relays the ice cream sticks on and off the conveyor. Each arm requires a two-axis operation as the movement mimics the careful movement of the human shoulder and elbow.
During the conveyor-run each link in the array of twelve clamps and ice cream sticks in the vats with chocolate-coating and nitrogen. The latter secures a quick-freeze of the first layer of chocolate making a good primer for the next layer to achieve the thick, crunchy chocolate-coating that is so globally popular.
The handling of the ice cream sticks is purely mechanical and done pneumatically by gripping the stick with a 3bar regulated air-pressure during handling. The eight Mitsubishi-motors in the machine are conveniently all of the same type, HGJR203B, powered by drives, MRJ4, from the same supplier. A single PLC, Q-PLC, controls the machine’s logic, whilst a motion controller, Q-172DS, controls the eight servo-drives. Add to this a range of alarm-, security- and emergency-functions to protect the staff operating and servicing the machine when in use.
Soft movements make the best ice cream sticks
The large MLPH is surprisingly quiet and smooth making a regular conversation next to the machine no challenge at all. The Mitsubishi-drives add to the calm and smooth pattern of movements even at max. speed which is at 9,600 ice cream stick an hour.
”The soft movements of the machine secures a very high yield and also ice cream sticks of a very high quality. The programming of the machine’s movements is done through inverted dynamics where the required movements of the arms was presented graphically to the computers after which the various parameters har been transformed to code. The gives the operators of the machine the advantage of being able to optimize the set-up of the MLPH while maintaining the soft and smooth movements throughout”, says René Sørensen.
At the touch-interface, a GOT-2000 from Mitsubishi, Morten Rønberg shows how easy settings like the indexing, dipping-times, pick-and-place coordinates and similar features can be altered using a graphical user interface to maximize the efficiency of the MPLH’s function when working in-line with the rest of the ice cream manufacturing line.
It’s quite exciting that the new MLPH-machine runs without sensors. These are according to René Sørensen bound to undermine the reliability of any piece of process automation equipment as the cleansing-process can alter the intended position of the sensors – or even break them. The MLPH is instead configurated as a virtual cam-equipment (coordinated access movement). This is of course quite in itself a challenge, as it calls for a non-collision design that prevents accidental contact between the moving parts, should the electronic control system fail. Hence the control of the movements are exclusively run in the program rather than in a closed-loop feedback-system. This again makes it possible to control each axis individually in the machine.
No doubt René Sørensen and the team behind the new MLPH-machine is looking forward to see it in operation in Japan, where the ice cold technology will supply the Japanese consumers with a cool and sweet ice cream experience.
