Case Studies

Studies Archived by Title:

Unique Design for Composite Manufacturer in the Windmill Industry
West Bend Equipment Designs Custom Vehicle Mover
West Bend Designs Custom Tilt Table for E-One
Innovative Design of Pump Test Stands Improves Efficiency of Prototype Lab
Inverting the Process
Burning Made Easy

Unique Design for Composite Manufacturer in the Windmill Industry

The West Bend Equipment Division of Bushman Equipment, Inc. recently designed a number of unique products for a composite manufacturer in the windmill industry.
The first application required a fiberglass propeller for a wind powered turbine generator to be held and rotated 360 degrees for quality inspections. The propellers range in length from approximately 90 to 96 feet, and they weigh 11,000 pounds. West Bend engineers met the needs of this customer by designing a pair of inverter carts to position and rotate the propeller during quality and reliability tests. Each cart is able to rotate 360 degrees. One cart is powered, and the other is an idler cart. Both carts have swivel casters, providing mobility for proper positioning of the propeller. The powered cart has two metal rollers, one of which is driven by an electric motor. The rollers have a non-marring surface to prevent damage to the fiberglass surface of the propeller. The carts are driven with a variable frequency drive for smooth, precise control. The mobility of the carts increases efficiency when moving the propellers to other areas.

The second part of this application required a load tester and test stand to perform the rigorous bending and vibration tests that ensure each blade will hold up under the harsh windmill environment. 25,000 pounds of pressure is exerted on each blade to verify the integrity and measurements of the blade, as well as to confirm the natural frequency of the blade. The equipment was designed to minimize handling time and simplify the testing process.

To accomplish this, West Bend created a special scissor lift table with a calibrated load weighing system that can apply the correct bending pressure and a unique test stand that hydraulically clamps the blade firmly to a rigid grounding point. This special hydraulic clamping mechanism enables quick installation and removal of the blades during testing.

West Bend Equipment Designs Custom Vehicle Mover

The West Bend EasyMover is a great utility tool for moving vehicles without having to start the engine or put the vehicle in-gear. Applications include moving a car from the assembly line for emissions testing at the factory; moving vehicles in a dealer lot, showroom, service bay, or rental car service center.

The EasyMover has a slim 5-inch profile and slides under any car or truck with ease. With the push of a button, the lifting pads extend behind, lock onto the wheels of the vehicle, and lift it off the ground.

A variable speed electronic drive system pulls the vehicle at a speed of up to 3 miles per hour. A 24-volt DC battery ensures there are no toxic fumes. The self-contained hydraulic system requires minimal maintenance. The EasyMover comes equipped with multiple safety features, including posi-grip controls, clamp and lift interlocks, and a traction-reversing switch.

The unique EasyMover will improve the productivity of your operation while providing a safe and clean working environment for your employees.

West Bend Designs Custom Tilt Table for E-One

E-One, a leading manufacturer of fire-fighting equipment selected the West Bend Division of Bushman Equipment, Inc. to design and build a high capacity tilt table to test their new breed of fire trucks. E-One, established in 1974 and employing more than 1,300 people, manufactures virtually every type of fire and rescue vehicle required by fire departments, rescue/EMS squads and airports.

One of the requirements in producing their Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) trucks is to test them in accordance with SAE J2180. This specification establishes the procedure for measuring the Static Rollover Threshold for heavy trucks. Very simply, it determines the angle at which the trucks could tip over.

tilt case study

E-One previously performed this test using two in-house manufactured tilt tables spaced approximately 25 feet apart. The existing equipment was causing increasing concerns. First, today's trucks are heavier, but it was not feasible to increase the capacity of the existing tables. Secondly, it was very difficult to coordinate control of the two independent hydraulic tables. It had become obvious the existing equipment had to be replaced.

In response, West Bend designed one large, high capacity table as opposed to the two smaller independent tables. Based on projected loads, the tilt table was built with a drive-on top, 11 feet wide and 40 feet long, and with enough capacity to tilt loads weighing up to 150,000 pounds.

The table had to be mounted outside and above grade, due to local flooding concerns in Florida. In its folded down position, the table is over three feet tall. E-One added the concrete ramps leading onto and off the table.

The table was designed and manufactured at the Bushman/West Bend facility in Menomonee Falls, WI. It consisted of two main structures. The base, which itself is a two-piece weldment, and the tilt top that the truck drives onto. These two pieces were hinged together on the 40-foot side. Tilting is accomplished by five, 7-inch diameter dual acting hydraulic cylinders, operating at a system pressure of 2,000 psi from a 25 hp remote mounted hydraulic power unit. A steel curb was incorporated into the tabletop, and safety tie down bars were built to secure the trucks.

The table was fully assembled at West Bend and tested with 150,000 pounds of steel and concrete block weights. Tests were performed with an evenly distributed load and then with the load re-distributed (70/30) to simulate an actual truck. Pressure compensated adjustable flow control valves were used to keep the table flat while raising and lowering.

During a test, the truck is driven onto the table, and its axles are secured with chains. The truck is then tilted to the point when the tires begin to lift off the table. This position determines the rollover threshold that is recorded.

Since the table is used outdoors, all controls are housed in NEMA 4X stainless steel cabinets. The fully functional operator's console is equipped with operating switches and a position readout. Once energized, the table tilts at 0.25 degrees/second. An inclinometer is incorporated into the table. Digital readouts are located on the operator's console and on a separate six-inch, freestanding scoreboard visible to everyone in the test area.

The installation was well planned. The table weighed approximately 52,000 pounds, but unloading, leveling, anchoring, field wiring and hydraulic plumbing were completed in just three days.

According to Greg Hofmann, E-One's manufacturing engineer in charge of the project, the table has expanded E-One's capabilities. "The stability of any vehicle is determined by a low center of gravity. This tilt table not only allows us to test ARFF vehicles, but also a host of other trucks." Hofmann added, "With this test data we are now determining critical center of gravity information which is crucial as we develop and refine our designs. This gives E-One a sharp, new competitive edge in the marketplace."

Innovative Design of Pump Test Stands Improves Efficiency of Prototype Lab

Bushman Equipment's custom design expertise was recently put to use by a Midwest based pump manufacturer. This company puts their prototype designs through rigorous stress and endurance tests. Their previous method took between 15 to 20 hours to set up a prototype pump and motor for testing. These pieces can weigh up to 3,000 pounds each, and require extremely precise alignment.

Bushman's West Bend division was asked to design a portable test fixture that would allow easier adjustment of centerline height and spacing to accommodate a wide range of pump and motor combinations. In response, West Bend designed and built two test stands. Each unit has two heavy steel tables with milled tee-slots to secure the pump and motor. The tables have precise hand crank adjustment through a 4-corner ball screw actuator system. One hand-wheel revolution equals .042" of vertical height adjustment. One of the tables can also be moved laterally to adjust the distance between pump and motor centerlines.

Due to space constraints and limited overhead lifting capacity, West Bend engineers designed in air bearings to allow easy movement of the test stand for placement in the desired area of the lab. The technicians can simply plug in the available compressed air supply and the 4,000-pound stands can be pushed by hand along the floor.

The test stands are cutting set-up time by at over 50% and greatly reduce the strain of shoving and shimming the heavy components into proper alignment. The addition of the pump test stands will reduce total lab time and help get new products to market faster.

Inverting the Process

Large industrial mechanical and hydraulic inverters are an essential feature at many steel producing and user sites. Design principles, types, selection and safe working practices are discussed.

The steel industry's need to handle material quickly and safely, while eliminating product damage, makes the use of large industrial, mechanical and hydraulic inverters a standard fixture at many sites. These inverters can stack sheared sheets so the cut edge is correctly oriented or can handle a 10,000-megawatt transformer being prepared for sandblasting. Such operations require minimal human intervention.

Mechanical and Hydraulic Inverter Design
Determining the correct size of the unit, equipment operation, and safety considerations, together with the correct integration of a hydraulic/mechanical inverter in a steel handling application are important fundamentals of designing a mechanical or hydraulic inverter.

Inverter Design, Basic Principles

Figure 1: Inverter Free Body Diagram

Inverters, which hold and rotate a load 180-degrees, require a sufficient clamping force to hold the load safely. This clamping force is created by a hydraulic scissors action that imposes a perpendicular force on the load.

Effects of coefficient of friction on clamping load using 1000 pound load

Figure 2

The clamping pressure sets up a tangential force that is coupled with a friction coefficient to overcome the weight of the load. Figure 1 shows the load in the worst-case scenario, with the full effect of gravity maximizing the required clamping force. The friction coefficient between the different layers of the load is critical in determining the necessary clamping force. A stack of lubricated aluminum sheets with wooden pallets at the top and bottom is a good example of a multi-layered load. This configuration is frequently seen in the automotive industry. The friction coefficient between the rough wood of the pallets and the aluminum sheets is high, 0.35, so a relatively small clamping force is required for this layer. However, the coefficient between each lubricated aluminum sheet can be as low as 0.08, which would require a clamping force of as much as five times the weight of the load. In this scenario, slippage of the sheets is more likely to occur in the center of the load between the aluminum sheets rather than at the pallet/sheet or pallet/scissors table interface. The inverter's clamping force needs to be sized for the interface with the smallest friction coefficient.

If the process line needs to invert only single units of product, such as dies, finished products, or tightly banded materials, the clamping force can usually be reduced, since the only sliding interfaces would be between the product and the clamp tables. Methods that can be used to secure the load and reduce the clamping force required to safely invert the material include applying high friction surfaces, installing guides, and having automatic alignment pins to interface with the load once it is placed on the clamp tables.

Barrel Inverters

Barrel Inverters custom designed by West Bend Equipment

Figure 3

There are two main types of inverters, barrel inverters and C-frame inverters. The load is placed in one end or side of the barrel, the load is clamped, and a drive motor inverts the barrel 180 degrees. The advantage of this type of inverter is that it can be loaded and unloaded from one side, saving the forklift operator time since the truck does not need to be repositioned to remove the inverted load.

Another important factor is structural strength. The circular sections of the barrel inverter can be made out of single profiled plates, reducing the potential for fatigue cracking in the highly stressed areas of each plate.

C-frame Inverters

C-frame Inverters custom designed by West Bend Equipment

Figure 4

The C-frame inverter is shown in Figure 4. The C-frame inverter's biggest advantage is flexibility as they can be used to invert materials of many different lengths because the ends of the load can extend beyond the ends of the inverter, along its axis of rotation. Operators can also load C-frame inverters easily from three different sides. After inversion, the C-frame inverter can then be unloaded on the opposite side from where it was loaded. Alternatively, a rotator or bearing assembly can be placed under the C-frame inverter to allow loading and unloading from the same position. In this instance, the manufacturing engineer must carefully consider the circle of rotation of the C-frame inverter plus the load material, especially if the load extends out the sides of the inverter.

If it is properly centered in a C-frame inverter, the load can extend out the sides since the center-of-gravity (CG) does not shift with respect to the axis of rotation, only with the width of the load. Hence, if the load extends out the front, the CG may be outside the design basis and equipment damage may occur. It is important to train the operators to understand that the load needs to be properly centered on the C-frame inverter. An easy operator interface tool is to paint a target on the clamping tables to provide a visible positioning aide.

Specific Design Considerations
The rotation of the inverter cylinder is normally accomplished by a gear motor with a fast acting integral brake, coupled to a chain and sprocket mechanism. Rotation can also be achieved with hydraulic motors, friction rollers or other rotational drive systems. The rotational drive system should be sized, based on the moment arm created by the sum of the centers-of-gravity of both the inverter and the load, coupled with a sufficient margin to overcome static friction, starting torque and dynamic loading. The actual load size and location of the CG need to be clearly stated in the design, so there is no confusion between the manufacturer and the user. The drive or inverter can be damaged if the CG of the load is not positioned within the design envelope.

Rarely does a manufacturing line continuously produce the same size material, so the inverter needs to be able to handle loads of different sizes. The largest and smallest load heights will determine the clamping range of the clamp tables. The largest raw material to be inverted plus the height of the top and bottom pallet, or other material-handling device, normally defines the height of the inverter opening. An additional two to four inches of clearance height is advisable to allow for forklift maneuverability or conveyor space.

For a barrel inverter, the maximum length must be defined, but with a C-frame inverter, this dimension is usually only limited by the capacity of the inverter and the floor space around the inverter. The minimum length of the load needs to be established for some designs, since the clamping platforms may be able to deflect around the ends of a load that is too short. The deflection of the clamping platform can create high point loading which can damage both the material and the inverter. Adjustable pressure control is a design enhancement that can eliminate this problem.

As the clamping force is directly proportional to the weight of the load being inverted, for an inverter that has a large capacity range, the clamping force at the maximum capacity may be too high and cause damage to a small or lightweight product. Using a combination of hydraulic control valves, pressure transducers, and analog inputs to a programmable logic controller (PLC), the manufacturer can develop a control system to allow the operator to select the correct clamping force required for a specific load, based on the weight of that load.

Figure 5
In Figure 5, dual, rigidly mounted swivel joints connected to flexible hosing create the clamping/unclamping hydraulic flow paths.

Hydraulic fluid needs to be introduced into the rotating cylinder through hose and fluid couplings. In Figure 5, dual, rigidly mounted swivel joints connected to flexible hosing create the clamping/unclamping hydraulic flow paths. Similarly, electrical connections to the rotating cylinder can be through swivel connections or through an electrical cable reel. With electrical connections, the limiting components are the number of conductors that are needed on the rotating cylinder. For inverters on process lines, the combination of powered conveyors and sensors tends to make an electric cable reel the only option.

Figure 6
The inverter shown in Figure 6 allowed the material to be introduced into one end, inverted, and then discharged out either end, based on a command from the control system.

For automated systems, conveyors frequently perform loading and unloading functions. Powered conveyors, located on both clamping platforms, allow the control system to automatically introduce the material to the inverter and discharge after inversion. Sensors, such as photo-eyes or ultrasonic sensors, can be used to properly align the material in the center of the inverter before inversion. Additional sensors should be installed for safety on the outside edges of the rotating conveyors to ensure that no material extends beyond the inverter before rotation. The height of the conveyors, at the point of introduction and discharge, needs to be aligned with the conveyors inside the inverter. The inverter shown in Figure 6 allowed the material to be introduced into one end, inverted, and then discharged out either end, based on a command from the control system. This dictated that the unit be designed so that all of the conveyors were at the same height when ready to operate. The conveyor rollers are an additional design consideration. These need to accommodate not only the weight of the load but also the clamping force exerted by the inverter. Stronger rollers inside the inverter, compared to the rollers outside the inverter, compensate for the higher forces and ensure long life.

Safety
A typical automotive industrial inverter has a capacity of 15,000 pounds and a clamping force of 75,000 pounds. With these high loads, plus the weight of the cylinder rotating in 20 seconds, personnel safety is a crucial factor and must be designed into the unit as an integral feature. Numerous safety innovations can be included. The following are strongly recommended:

Safety Pins and Stops
The rotating cylinder and the clamp tables should have safety pins that can be used during maintenance. These pins can be designed to be padlocked in place for a Lockout/Tagout system.
Hydraulic Safety Considerations
ANSI MH29.1 (American National Standards Institute) recommends a number of items that should be incorporated into the inverter. Among these issues are overload protection, velocity fuses, limits on maximum operating pressures, and end stops. Although this standard is for industrial scissors lifts, it is applicable to the clamping mechanism on many inverters.
Emergency Stop Buttons
Emergency stop buttons should be placed at all egresses from the inverter and on the operator panel. The E-stop should stop all motion, maintain power to the control system and maintain pressure control. When the unit is powered back up, motion should not resume until the operator has provided a positive initiating action.
ANSI/NFPA-70
Electrical wiring and equipment should meet or exceed the requirements of the National Electric Code (ANSI/NFPA-70), or local national standards.
Personnel Barriers
Light curtains or metal caging should be installed to prevent personnel from inadvertently coming near a unit during operation. The light curtains should be connected into the same circuit as the E-stop or similar device. The open perimeter distance required before allowing rotation to begin, should be approximately one to three yards.
Additional Safety Features
These include load sensors for verifying that the load is in the proper location, multiple pressure transducers to monitor pressures throughout the system, and operator lights or alarms.

Summary
The specification, installation and training processes associated with the purchase of an inverter constitute a significant capital project. For this reason, it is of vital importance that the integration of the inverter into a process line be thoroughly reviewed. Among the issues to be considered are the following:

Current and future materials to be handled.
Required flexibility.
Method of loading and unloading.
Safe working procedures.

Planning process integration up-front will ensure that the hydraulic-mechanical inverter can provide significant productivity and quality enhancements.

Burning Made Easy

Metalworking, material handling team up for big savings

Integrated handling system helps service center cut process time 50%, boost productivity 75%, and enhance safety.

A prominent North American steel service center has significantly improved productivity and safety, while drastically cutting costs, by fully integrating material handling into a metalworking process. The process involves plasma and gas burning of steel plates to make custom-designed parts for manufacturers. Until now, manual material handling had been an efficiency bottleneck and safety concern.

The operation can be divided into two distinct phases; the high-technology side of the actual torch operation and the dirty, labor intensive side of handling the pieces after they have been burned. We have all seen brilliant pictures of multiple torches slicing through thick steel plate with incredible speed and accuracy. The neon blue/green flame is manipulated perfectly by a computer that has maximized the utilization of the plate and the entire operation has minimal operator interface. The picture you never see is the grimy side of the injury-prone process in which workers pull the individual pieces from the burn table, flip them over to clean the edges, and then package the pieces.

The majority of the cycle time and direct labor costs comes from the material handling phase of the process. With customers demanding higher quality components, faster, on-time delivery and continuous price reductions, improving the material handling phase is thus crucial to meeting market demands and staying competitive.

Many companies have made incremental changes to the material handling operation, but the wholesale re-engineering of the entire process has not been successfully implemented--until now! The service center knew that it had to reduce delivery times and costs to enhance revenues. The company decided to completely re-think the material handling operation and eliminate the constraints of past paradigms and long-established traditions. By taking significant risks, it took a monumental leap forward and streamlined the process, going from four men touching the individual parts two to three times, to two men who never physically touch the part. Processing time has plunged by more than half, resulting in significant additional uptime on the cutting torches.

The material handling phase begins when the torch bridge is rolled away from the burned plate. The large skeleton that is left may contain up to a hundred parts burned into the interior of the plate. These parts all have slag around the bottom perimeter. This slag is a by-product of the cutting process and must be removed by some mechanical method (grinding, scraping, machining, etc.) before the part can be shipped to the customer.

The conventional process usually starts by removing each piece with a magnet or other "below-the-hook" material handling device and placing it in a pile next to the burn table. Individual pieces that drop through the slats into the water table need to be fished out by hand. The pile is then transported to a separate area where the pieces are flipped over and the slag removed with a hand scraper. The process is complicated by the fact that the pieces have multiple configurations and range in weight from 1 lb to 300 lb. After all the slag is removed, the pieces are sorted by customer and stacked onto pallets prior to shipping.

The new approach
The company reviewed this process and established three ambitious goals:

Eliminate multiple manual handling of individual pieces.
Eliminate the potential of injuries to workers.
Cut process time by 50%.

Cost savings would naturally result if these three goals were accomplished. The key to success was to look at the entire task as one process and design the equipment around it. The final design resulted in an integrated handling system (Bushman Equipment) with the following major components: special permanent magnet system, inlet table, barrel inverter, outlet table, skeleton removal crane, and packaging table system.

The first stage of the process involves a 100% duty-cycle magnet having 54 permanent AC magnets designed to lift an entire burned plate (skeleton and individual burned parts as one entity) at one time. The magnet can handle a 96 in. by 240 in. plate up to 2 in. thick. Individual components that have fallen after burning can be realigned by the powerful magnet field so that all the steel is transported from the burn table as one assembly.

Figure 1: Overhead crane picks up magnet carrying burned plate and moves it onto inlet table. The table contains a steel mesh conveyor on its surface.

An overhead crane picks up the magnet with the burned plate and moves it to the inlet table, Fig. 1. The inlet table consists of a steel framed table, topped with a large steel mesh conveyor designed to withstand high dynamic loadings. The magnet disengages the burned plate onto the inlet table and then returns for the next load. The inlet table contains a transition joint operated by an electrical actuator to make a smooth transition between the table and a barrel inverter. When the control and safety switches indicate proper alignment between the table and barrel inverter, the table conveyor and the barrel conveyor are activated, and the burned plate is transported into the inverter. Proximity switches strategically placed throughout the process line provide real-time information to ensure that the plate and its parts are moving properly. Once the plate is fully inserted into the barrel inverter, the conveyors stop, and the transition joint is automatically retracted.

Figure 2: Inlet table, left, containing burned plate is aligned with barrel inverter, right. The barrel inverter turns 8,000 lb plate over for de-slagging.

The barrel inverter has only one job - to turn over the metal plate. However, the 20 ft long plate weighs 8,000 lb and may have a hundred individual components embedded into it. The 14 ft diameter barrel inverter, Fig. 2, uses four hydraulic cylinders to clamp the burned plate between two special steel chain mesh conveyors. Top and bottom conveyors are required since the plate needs to be carried in and out of the barrel after rotation. The barrel inverter is rotated using a heavy duty worm gear brake motor linked to a variable-frequency chain drive system. The drive ensures smooth operation of the large rotating equipment, and precise control when the unit stops after rotating 180 deg. The barrel inverter and outlet table are precisely aligned so the plate can be effortlessly transferred out of the inverter and onto the outlet table.

Workhorse of the line

Figure 3: Outlet table, left, aligns with barrel inverter prior to receiving transferred plate.

Figure 4: Using a chipping tool, operator walks over the plate on the outlet table and quickly scrapes off slag.

The outlet table is the workhorse of the process line, Fig. 3. This multi-function machine has 3 axes of motion and consists of a scissors lift, topped with a steel mesh conveyor, and integrated with a trolley drive system for lateral movement along a track. To start the transfer of the burned plate to the outlet table, the scissor lift is fully raised and the outlet table and inverter conveyors are aligned. Once properly aligned, the two conveyors are activated and the plate moves out of the inverter and onto the outlet table. When the control system confirms the plate is fully discharged from the inverter, the conveyors stop and the outlet table simultaneously lowers and trolleys horizontally along the tracks to a deslag area. Once in the deslag area, a modular crane system equipped with an overhead electric hoist lifts the skeleton and deposits it in a nearby scrap pile for recycling (a one-man operation.) With the skeleton out of the way, the operator uses a chipping tool on the remaining burned pieces to quickly scrape off the slag which falls into a debris area for collection, Fig 4.

Figure 5: Packaging table is equipped with conveyor to move de-slagged pieces from outlet table. Pieces are then moved by force-balance hoist to a waiting pallet.

After the operator deslags the pieces, the outlet table trolleys horizontally to align itself to one of the two packaging tables. Conveyors on both the outlet table and packaging table start up and the de-slagged pieces are transferred to the packaging table. When a sensor determines that the transfer is complete, the conveyors stop. An operator at the exit end of the packaging table then takes control of the packaging table's conveyor, and using a foot pedal control, slowly advances the pieces toward him so that they can be sorted, Fig 5. Again, the operator never touches the pieces; instead he uses a high speed hoist system coupled with a small magnet to easily lift the individual parts from the conveyor surface to a waiting pallet. The system takes the full load of the component, from 1 lb to 300 lb, and the operator simply uses the control handle to direct movement of parts. The table setup is ergonomically optimized for the worker and bending is minimized.

All limit switches, pressure transducers, proximity switches, variable-frequency drives, photo-reflective photo-eyes, and hundreds of other inputs are linked by a network to a simple programmable logic controller (PLC). A single console provides the operator with a clear picture of the current state of each piece of machinery, plus real-time monitoring of the multiple plates moving through the system. The operator can control each piece of machinery manually, or in the automatic mode, the PLC automatically controls the manipulation of each burned plate. In addition, a touch screen provides real-time diagnostic information and alerts, and troubleshooting indications for the maintenance department.

Safety is built in
One of the primary goals of the system was to eliminate worker injuries, and every step of the design and manufacturing process incorporated that goal. The most important safety feature is that the operator does not touch the parts, thus preventing hand injuries. Nor does the operator manually flip or lift parts, eliminating the potential for muscle strain. OSHA regulations were strictly followed with regard to walkways, railings, stairs, warning signals, and moving equipment. The operator has a clear view of all the operations, and equipment has been designed to minimize potential pinch points. Equipped with hundreds of interlocks and electrical safety systems, the process line is a model for worker safety.

In summary, significant technology has been implemented to improve the material handling sequence for burning plates. A process that focused on operator safety and improved productivity was installed. The company realized savings because the process changed from one that required four men to manually de-slag and package parts, to a process where two workers supervised automated equipment to do the same job in about half of the time. A 75% reduction in man-hours! Further savings are expected as the burn-table operation is sped up to keep up with the current process line pace.

System suppliers

Integrated handling system: Bushman Equipment
Permanent magnet system: O. S. Walker
High speed hoist system: Gorbel
Control system: Device Net (TM)--Rockwell Automation (Allen-Bradley)