Improving the brick making process

The overall brick making process takes fine clay from the crusher along a series of conveyors to the clay processing mills. From there, elevators carry the clay powder to the ‘Morgensen sizers’ for multiple separation into the selection silo according to product size. Depending on the end product, the clay moves through the added dry mix process to the auger stage, where the dry powder is mixed with water and additional additives to produce wet clay, which is then fed into the brick extruder.

Our project objectives were to replace obsolete PLC and desk control equipment with a Siemens S7 PLC and a WINCC Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system. The replacement control system would also enable production staff to enter data such as mixing and grinding recipes via a touch screen monitor.

 

Our Solution

State-of-the-art hardware that is both well proven and supported in the UK, was utilised to significantly improve equipment reliability for the brick plant. Iconsys also improved diagnostics, ensuring less downtime, while enhancing the ease of the operator/machine interface.

The SCADA provides easily viewed plant status, alarms and system overview screens. Alarm logging and production data logging are available to management over a plant-wide Intranet. ICS extended the capabilities of the existing system to control an additional route from box feeders to silos, achieving greater production and system flexibility.

 

Results

• Replacement of obsolescent equipment
• Improved diagnostics, ensuring less downtime, while enhancing the ease of the operator/machine interface
• Extended capabilities of the existing system
• Greater production and system flexibility