Aston Martin - Gaydon Warwickshire - Body Build Facility

Highlights

Aston Martin Lagonda (Gaydon) required a complete control system for its new Body Build Facility. The facility consists of two separate conveying systems, with overall control from one central Siemens S7-400 plc.

The Platen Delivery Accumulation Conveyors circulate various body parts on custom made platens. Aston Martin required a control facility to error proof individual body selection in 10 stations of the Body Build Facility. This was to ensure components are correctly placed onto the platens prior to the Degas Oven. This begins with a part picking process using MacDonald Humfrey (Products) Ltd VS1500 touch screens. These screens display photographic images of the parts and the relevant picking information required by the operator.

After being conveyed through a Degas Oven (Inverter Speed controlled) moving a certain pitch every few minutes, the platens arrive at a line side delivery conveyor. The parts are then picked again and assembled on the body build roller bed system.The skid then moves station to station via a curing oven until the process is complete. We interface with different tooling and the curing oven throughout the process via DP/DP couplers and hardwired interlocks.

The topology that is shown is typical for controlling one of the nine colour coded local control zones.

Each zone consists of a head of line colour coded isolator. Any device or motor with the same colour label indicates the control zone it is electrically supplied from. This aids considerably with maintenance and isolation issues with the numerous amount of conveyors in one area.