As part of a GBP 40 million investment in process control equipment, bottled water company Highland Spring has installed over 80 of the new Siemens Micromaster 4 inverters at its Blackford, Auchterarder site. The recent expansion in production, which has seen capacity at the plant increase to 160% of its previous throughput, relies heavily on the use of drives, controlled via a Profibus-DP network. Although the process of bottling the spring water, which originates from the Ochil Hills in Perthshire, is reasonably straightforward, the control of the conveyor systems and packaging machinery used on the three production lines is extremely complex.
The modular approach used in the development of the Siemens Micromaster 4 paid dividends during installation, which had to be carried out with minimum disruption to the plant's throughput.
Terminal connections on the drives are all screwless and their innovative cooling system allows Micromaster units to be mounted side by side.
Conventional wiring was ruled out because of the long cable runs involved, and the need to commission the conveyor systems that feed the filled bottles along the plant lines as fast as possible.
Engineers were able to provide control for all of the Micromaster MM4 inverters by utilising a distributed control network built around Profibus-DP.