Pluck Pluck

Theres too many variables to get it to work!!

That is what three different Drives manufacturers told our Drives Manager and an International Poultry suppliers leading Maintenance Electrician.

Alinement of the main track with an adjacent Drumstick cutter wheel were going out of sync and losing approximately 4 hours downtime per week.

To place another angle on this, there can be upto 5200 birds per hour passing through this section. Approx 1.5 per second. Thus downtime could mean 20800 birds per week not being processed.

We had variables of, worn track, different weights and sizes of birds, slack through the gearbox, to name but a few.

The main track is being controlled by a Danfoss VLT5000 drive and the Drumstick cutter was mechanically driven by gears and a drive shaft coming off the main drive.

It was suggested by our guy and the electrician to replace the drive shaft with a Danfoss Bauer gearbox and control this with a Danfoss FC302 constant torque drive. The drive in turn being controlled by digital pulses from the VLT5000.

Having thought about this, it was noted that the Drumstick cutter would follow the main drive motor perfectly but would not be able to take into account the variables listed above. The only way to do this would be to syncronise the Drumstick cutter to the passing shackles.

We did this by introducing a relay logic controller, proxy switches and metal flags within the plastic Drumstick cutter wheel. This enabled us to syncronise with the variables.

The quality of production(yield) in that department is now the best it has ever been.