Can't find replacements, need product enhancements, or looking for an entirely new design to fix a problem? VANDENTECH provides clients with custom board designs and hardware solutions, from printed circuit boards to entire assemblies.
Our products include high voltage isolated signal transducers, high-power gate drivers, SCR assemblies, Analog PI regulators, and more. Where larger firms cannot afford to allocate resources to building small quantities, VANDENTECH Engineering excels at low volume, high quality, custom solutions. We have even redesigned and built boards for a large fortune 500 company unable to support their own legacy product. We provide a nimble response to niche markets that require flexible solutions simply not available from big manufacturers. Have a design problem? Contact us.
In addition to discrete level repairs and design, we also assist in system upgrades. Shown below are the before and after pictures of an upgrade made on a local mill's slitting machine controls. The original Emerson/Wer DC drives and auxiliary control cards were obsolete and constantly breaking down. With repair costs and downtime escalating, we re-engineered the system to work with new digital drives from Control Techniques in conjunction with an Allen-Bradley SLC503 PLC and PanelviewTM. Since software functions superseded much of the original hardware, the upgrade reduced the overall footprint significantly. In this steel application, the decrease in electro-mechanical relaying alone greatly reduced future breakdowns caused by bad contacts.
The PLC and user interface control were engineered to include parameter configuration, automatic overrides to inhibit
damage from operator error (adaptive algorithms), system diagnostics, loop controls with optical feedback,
and other performance improvements. The machine incorporated an unwinder with roll diameter sensing, two loop pits for
control of metal expansion, a slitting section, and tension regulated rewinder.
The entire design was pre-tested with
as much of the I/O simulated as possible, prior to shut down, to ensure a successful installation with only a two week
window in which to remove all obsolete equipment, install the new hardware, and restore operations. Apart from minor
adjustments, the machine was back in
production as scheduled, and sadly, our lucrative troubleshooting business with this client was greatly diminished from
that time forward. Still, it was a rewarding project for all concerned and we are proud to have done it.