An innovative automated system with production control and maintenance management for an aggregates processing plant has been completed by Italian company Ma-estro. Carried out for the Calcestruzzi plant, which is part of the Italcementi Group, the production unit is near Cagliari, capital of the island of Sardinia. It is mainly used in several ready-mix concrete plants, both for use within the group and for other customers. All study, design and management phases have been followed by Raffaele Piludu,
An innovative automated system with production control and maintenance management for an aggregates processing plant has been completed by Italian company Ma-estro
Carried out for the Calcestruzzi plant, which is part of the Italcementi Group, the production unit is near Cagliari, capital of the island of Sardinia.
It is mainly used in several ready-mix concrete plants, both for use within the group and for other customers.
All study, design and management phases have been followed by Raffaele Piludu, technical manager of the Calcestruzzi crushing plants for central and southern Italy.
He had clear objectives that the system had to guarantee, and after evaluation Ma-estro was chosen, having presented a complete project, supplying a real management program along with automated plant control.
The plant is made up of a primary washing and selection of natural sands line, and another line for crushing, washing and selection of gravels with the production of crushed sand.
The system manages both production lines, which are displayed on two monitors, and all the graphics have been customised to make the system intuitive and user-friendly.
Ma-estro’s Quarry Control system allows the entire plant to be managed with a minimum number of staff present, which is said to make it cost effective and also to increase safety on site.
With Quarry Control the need to operate directly on site is drastically reduced as all material controls and dosing are managed automatically.
The system is said to be very flexible and allows “dialogue with the various modules” available on the plant.
For example, if connected, the Quarry Production Control is the system used to control production, processing times and energy consumption; Quarry Maintenance Control is used to control routine and extraordinary maintenance and quality controls, and Quarry Control Pro is used to optimise production, automate the plant start/stop sequences and check all working machines.
Hardware includes weighing systems for production control; energy meters for energy consumption and analysis of the electric line; sonar technology level sensors; hydrocyclone pressure control; control of current absorption of all machines, and rotation sensors on all belts.
Further hardware offers jamming sensors where there is a probability of jamming; washing water level sensors, and control via an inverter for all feeders.
Quarry Control Pro, Quarry Maintenance Control and Quarry Production Control have been inserted into a graphical interface, whose complete version can be consulted via web and also on the plant in a simplified version via a touch-screen monitor, and it is also suitable for use by staff without computer skills.
“Ma-estro also operates abroad, and thanks to modern systems it is possible to offer real-time services and after-sales assistance to geographically distant companies,” says the company.
Systems in action
The Quarry Control Pro software automates the production process, and detects the load of the machines present on the plant, determining the correct amount of material that the plant must produce to reach maximum efficiency.
It is usually calibrated on the plant where it is installed, and because of experience gained over the years, Ma-estro says it can adapt all of its solutions to the plant and to the operator using the system.
The system also monitors all belts and possible jamming points, which could lead to plant downtimes and pollution of the material produced.
Quarry Maintenance Control allows the monitoring of all expiry of maintenance and quality control interventions, guaranteeing traceability of all routine and extraordinary interventions carried out on the plant. It is used on the plant via simple touch-screen graphics, and the system records all the information in a powerful database, which can be consulted remotely via web or locally on the plant display.
Maintenance management can be extended to the entire company fleet.
Quarry Production Control in use at the Cagliari plant has been fitted with three Pfreundt (a German company that has collaborated with Ma-estro for many years) conveyor belt weighing systems and three energy meters for consumption analysis and status of the mains electricity network. These communicate all data to the system, which automatically records all production information in tonnes and all energy consumption, calculating the incidence of electricity consumption per tonne produced.
