Transcript
Vehicle Weighing Industrial Weighing and Measuring
Lightning Protection Solves Downtime Problem A lightning strike can shut down a truck scale in a flash. When suppliers and customers started taking their business elsewhere, the Layton Mill & Timber Company resolved to put an end to the downtime caused by lightning damage. METTLER TOLEDO provided a solution by supplying a new truck scale with superior lightning protection.
The Layton Mill & Timber Company is a growing supplier of railroad ties and lumber located in the hills of northern Arkansas. Randall Layton started the company in 2006 when his older brother, Tommy, helped him buy a sawmill yard outside of Leslie, Arkansas. The mill purchases timber by weight from local loggers. After processing the timber, the mill sells it as lumber, railroad ties, cants, mulch, wood chips, and saw dust. When Layton acquired the mill, it came with a truck scale. Although the scale was far from new, it was functional and essential to the business. The company uses the scale to determine the net weight of the logs delivered to the mill, weighing each incoming truck when fully loaded and again when empty. If the mill’s scale
is not working, log trucks have to go elsewhere to use a truck scale that is open to the public. Scale downtime was a major inconvenience for suppliers. Whenever the mill’s scale was out of order, trucks delivering logs to the mill were forced to drive an extra 30 miles and pay twice to determine the net weight of the delivery. Some suppliers preferred to deliver their goods to another mill rather than spend the extra time and money. As a result, problems with the truck scale had a direct effect on the mill’s business. Lightning Problems The Layton Mill & Timber Company is located on top of a hill in the Ozark Mountains. Unfortunately, this site is
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Vehicle Scales
prone to lightning strikes during thunderstorms. The frequent lightning in the area was a constant threat to the company’s truck scale, causing costly unplanned downtime. In fact, the mill’s truck scale was damaged by lightning strikes many times over the first four years that Layton operated it. Each time, it took more than a week to get the scale working again. Randall Layton realized that truck scale downtime was causing major problems for his business. Each time lightning shut down the scale, some truck drivers took their loads to other mills. But the mill suffered from more than the business lost during the downtime. After the scale was repaired, it would take time for Layton to regain the confidence of suppliers and customers.
The Layton Mill & Timber Company relies on its truck scale to weigh the shipments of logs that it processes.
After the scale was damaged twice during the span of a few weeks in 2010, Layton decided to replace it. When investigating his options, he looked at the POWERCELL® PDX® load cell system from METTLER TOLEDO. He recognized that this new technology, with its superior lightning protection, could have a
Publisher / Production Mettler-Toledo AG MarCom Industrial Heuwinkelstrasse CH-8606 Nänikon Switzerland Subject to technical changes © 08/2011 Mettler-Toledo AG Printed in Switzerland
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The new METTLER TOLEDO truck scale protects the mill against downtime caused by lightning strikes.
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huge positive impact on his business. Independent laboratory tests have demonstrated the POWERCELL PDX system’s ability to survive lightning strikes up to 80,000 amperes. That is more than twice the destructive power of the average lightning strike. METTLER TOLEDO Value Layton compared the features of various scales and received quotes from several suppliers. Although it was not the lowest priced option, he purchased a METTLER TOLEDO steel deck truck scale with a POWERCELL PDX load cell network connected to an IND780 terminal. This advanced technology gives him the most reliable vehicle weighing solution on the market. With proper routine maintenance, the POWERCELL PDX predictive diagnostics system virtually eliminates unplanned downtime.
Layton also purchased a maintenance contract to help ensure the scale’s continued high performance. It gives him the peace of mind of knowing that his truck scale will no longer disappoint his suppliers and customers. System Scale provides preventive maintenance and calibration services for the mill’s weighing equipment. An authorized METTLER TOLEDO distributor, System Scale has been providing scales and service to customers in Arkansas for decades. In fact, Sales Engineer Rod McElhaney sold his first Toledo truck scale in the 1960s. Quality products from METTLER TOLEDO and excellent service from System Scale ensure that businesses continue to operate efficiently.
Webinar: How to Get More Out of Your Vehicle Scale Find out how POWERCELL PDX load cells have revolutionized vehicle weighing. They increase weighing accuracy and reliability while re ducing your total cost of ownership. The webinar covers lightning pro tection, predictive diagnostics, eliminating downtime, and other topics. Visit our website to register for the POWERCELL PDX webinar. www.mt.com/powercell-webinar
www.mt.com/vehicle
The mill uses the logs that it receives to produce lumber, railroad ties, cants, and other products.
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Vehicle Scales
Predictive Diagnostics The Cure to Your Weighing Problems There’s more to your vehicle scale than meets the eye. Hidden from view beneath the scale platform are key components such as load cells and cables. With conventional vehicle scales, many potential problems are hidden too.
• It monitors load cell performance to verify weighing accuracy. • It adjusts weight signals to compensate for environmental conditions. • It alerts you to potential problems. • It identifies the source of a problem to speed up repairs.
POWERCELL® PDX® Load Cell
A vehicle scale that seems fine on the surface can be hurting your business by weighing inaccurately. With conventional weighing technologies, you have no way of knowing when load cells are failing or have failed completely. The weighing errors that faulty load cells produce can go undetected for long periods, causing you to lose money and customers. POWERCELL® PDX® load cells provide the ultimate in weighing accuracy and reliability. Their unique predictive diagnostics system goes the extra mile to keep your weighing operation up and running:
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Constant Monitoring POWERCELL PDX load cells use a unique predictive diagnostics system to monitor the performance of the entire load cell network. It is like having a service technician checking out your scale every minute of every day. The system verifies network health and identifies any components that might need attention. All diagnostic information is at your fingertips 24 hours a day. By opening the
scale terminal’s diagnostic screens, you can view up-to-date data for each load cell. The system monitors supply voltage, COM voltage, temperature, calibration data, enclosure integrity, and other operating parameters. Automatic Adjustments The diagnostics system uses the information it collects to maintain the highest weighing accuracy. It tracks environmental conditions such as temperature, hysteresis, linearity, creep, and vibration. As conditions change, the system adjusts the load cell output to compensate for those changes. A microprocessor in each load cell uses a series of algorithms to cancel out the effects of internal and external influences.
An IND560 or IND780 scale terminal provides easy access to diagnostic data for the POWERCELL PDX load cell network.
technician so that proactive service can be performed immediately.
Digital compensation enables POWERCELL PDX load cells to weigh accurately in extreme environments.
Identifying Problems Predictive diagnostics tools eliminate the guesswork that makes other scales hard to service. They do more than tell you when service is needed. They identify the source of the problem, providing the precise information your service technician needs to make repairs quickly.
Stop paying the hidden costs of conventional load cells and the weighing errors they produce. Let POWERCELL PDX load cells give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing your vehicle scale is weighing accurately. www.mt.com/powercell
While conventional load cells lose accuracy in extreme conditions, POWERCELL PDX load cells deliver the same accurate weighing in all environments. Instant Alerts In a conventional load cell system, load cells, cables, and junction boxes can fail. When a problem occurs, it is often hidden from view. Weighing errors are passed on to the scale terminal and can go undetected for months. Meanwhile, the lost revenue adds up. POWERCELL PDX load cells change all that. If there is a potential problem, the predictive diagnostics system detects it instantly and alerts you before weighing errors and downtime affect your profits. Your scale can be set up to send alerts by E-mail to the scale operator, maintenance department, or local service
The diagnostics system alerts you to potential problems so that you can perform proactive service.
With POWERCELL PDX load cells, there are fewer problems to solve. The load cells connect to one another in a simple network that does not require junction boxes to sum the weight signals. By eliminating hard-to-seal junction boxes, the network eliminates the most common cause of vehicle scale failure.
By identifying the source of a problem, the diagnostics system enables service technicians to make repairs quickly.
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Software
Vehicle Scale Software Complete System Control at Your Fingertips If weighing is important to your bottom line, it should fit seamlessly into your business. METTLER TOLEDO vehicle scale software works hand in hand with other business systems to streamline the entire operation. With the right software, you can do more work and do it more efficiently.
Vehicle Scale Software
OverDrive® Software OverDrive software saves time and money by giving you complete control of your weighing operation. It simplifies weighing transactions while giving you instant access to weighing data for billing, inventory control, and compliance. • Controls multiple scales • Generates reports and tickets • Fully customizable
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Add-on Modules Boost your profits with add-on software modules. These options add valuable capabilities to the OverDrive system. • Invoicing module generates invoices from the OverDrive database. • Credit card module accepts credit card payments for transactions. • Video server module monitors scales and captures images.
Unattended
Unattended Terminals Unattended driver terminals allow drivers to process their own weighing transactions without a scale operator on duty. They save time and money for scales in remote locations, scales that operate 24/7, and facilities with multiple scales.
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Unattended Software Keep traffic moving over your scales while collecting the weighing information that is critical to your business. OverDrive unattended software enables unattended driver terminals to use the powerful OverDrive database to process transactions quickly and store complete data for each transaction.
Complete Scale Systems
Weighing Terminals OverDrive software is compatible with a variety of scale terminals, including models IND560 and IND780. These two high-performance terminals enable you to combine the unmatched accuracy and reliability of POWERCELL® PDX® load cells with the complete control of OverDrive software.
Peripheral Equipment OverDrive software can control the peripheral equipment used with your vehicle scales. It enables METTLER TOLEDO to supply complete vehicle scale systems, including everything needed to process transactions and regulate traffic: • Printers • Traffic lights • Traffic loops and gates www.mt.com/OverDrive
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Vehicle Scales
Iron Ore and Ice Weighing in Extreme Conditions The Arctic can be brutal on weighing equipment. When a Swedish mining company needed vehicle scales that would stand up to this far northern climate, it turned to METTLER TOLEDO. The solution was POWERCELL® technology with its proven ability to weigh accurately and reliably in extreme environments. (Photo courtesy of Stephan Horlak)
Founded in 1890, the Swedish mining company Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara A ktiebolag (LKAB) mines iron ore in Kiruna, 145 kilometers north of the A rctic Circle. Throughout the course of a year, Kiruna is subjected to an extreme range of temperatures. It faces icy winters with temperatures as low as – 40° Celsius (– 40° Fahrenheit) and summers during which the midnight sun heats the air to 30° Celsius (+ 86° Fahrenheit). In Kiruna, LKAB runs the world’s largest and most advanced iron ore mining op-
eration. It digs high-purity magnetic iron ore from mines in the two mountains of Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara. After extracting the iron ore, LKAB processes it into pellets the size of cherries. The small size of the pellets allows them to be melted quickly at lower temperatures. The high-quality pellets are automatically loaded onto 68 rail wagons, each weighing 121 tons. They are then sent on a 173-kilometer journey through the tundra and Arctic landscape to the port of Narvik on Norway’s Atlantic coast.
The coupled in-motion scales save time by weighing individual wagons as the train travels over a weighbridge.
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From there, cargo ships transport them to customers throughout the world. Before this valuable cargo is shipped overseas, it is weighed in Kiruna by three METTLER TOLEDO dynamic rail scales. The first scale weighs the empty wagons, the second weighs the wagons as they are filled, and the third weighs the wagons again at an unloading station. “While the train is moving, the first scale weighs the empty wagons and transmits results to the filling station,” explains
The tare scale enables LKAB to load the correct amount of iron ore into each wagon. (Photo courtesy of Stephan Horlak)
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Jeff Holcomb, European Market Manager for METTLER TOLEDO vehicle scales. Holcomb negotiated the sales conditions with LKAB and worked with Lars Olsson (Sales) and Harry Koski (Service) of the METTLER TOLEDO market organization in Sweden to coordinate the delivery and installation of the scales.
Following intensive comparisons with other technologies, LKAB decided to purchase rail scales from METTLER TOLEDO. Since being installed, the three rail scales have demonstrated their reliability while meeting the stringent demands of both the mining company and the local climate.
The in-motion weighing system uses the difference between the weight of each empty wagon and the permissible total weight to determine how much iron ore to load into the wagons. The second scale then establishes the actual weight of each filled wagon.
In Kiruna the same applies to both man and machine: exceptional conditions call for exceptional solutions. Using METTLER TOLEDO rail scales allows LKAB to master the extremes with the greatest success.
Benefit from Vehicle Weighing Technology Learn about the benefits that you get with METTLER TOLEDO weighing technology. Our innovative vehicle weighing systems save you time and money by delivering unmatched accuracy and reliability. Visit our website to watch videos that show how innovative METTLER TOLEDO technology can help protect your profits. www.mt.com/vehicle-videos
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LKAB must ensure that the wagons are accurately filled to the permissible total weight. If the wagons are overfilled, there is a risk that pellets could fall from the wagons during transport or that the weight could place too much strain on the track system. If the wagons are not sufficiently filled, they are not being used to their full capacity. While the filling operation can be monitored and controlled, there is no way to control the weather in the far north of Sweden. The harsh climate 145 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle includes temperature differences of up to 70 ° Celsius (158 ° Fahrenheit). This can have a huge impact on the accuracy and durability of a scale. How do the METTLER TOLEDO rail scales withstand these extreme conditions and continue to provide highly accurate weighing? “Our rail scale system is equipped with POWERCELL load cells”, says Holcomb. “POWERCELL load cells are designed in such a way that they can compensate for a total of seven different extreme weather conditions, such as severe cold and heat.”
METTLER TOLEDO rail scales are built to handle the demands of heavy-capacity weighing in any environment. (Photo courtesy of Stephan Horlak)
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Vehicle Scales
Don’t Let Downtime Eat into Your Profits Nothing gobbles up profits faster than downtime. It can turn a vehicle scale that is vital to a business into a costly bottleneck. Making an informed decision when buying a vehicle scale can help you avoid this problem.
The cost of repairing a malfunctioning vehicle scale can be expensive. But it pales beside the cost of shutting down production while the scale is out of order. The longer the scale is down, the more the costs add up. Let’s take a look at vehicle scale downtime and how it affects your business.
Many older scales require frequent maintenance to keep them weighing accurately, and each service call means downtime. A scale must also be shut down for periodic recalibration. The amount of downtime depends on how often the scale needs to be recalibrated and how long it takes to recalibrate.
Causes Any number of problems can put your vehicle scale out of commission. A weighing operation can be stopped cold by a lightning strike, severed cable, faulty junction box, or damaged weighbridge. But a complete scale failure isn’t the only thing that will cause downtime.
Results Regardless of what causes downtime, the result is lost money. If you buy or sell material by weight, you have two options. You can shut down completely or you can continue operating by estimating weights, assuming that is legal. Either way it will cost you.
When you shut down completely, you lose the business you cannot transact during the downtime. Don’t assume that the loss is temporary. Customers who are forced to go elsewhere to fill an order might never come back.
Junction boxes are frequent causes of failure and difficult to troubleshoot.
Estimating weights has its own risks. When you charge too little for materials, you lose money. When you charge too much, you risk losing customers. If your scale is part of a processing or filling operation, a shutdown will affect the entire production line. Your losses can snowball as orders are not filled and work stops in other production areas. Unreliable vehicle scales can turn your weighing operation into a costly bottleneck.
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Tips and Tricks FREE How Much Does Downtime Cost? Don’t be taken by surprise. Find out how much money you stand to lose if your vehicle scale is shut down temporarily.
POWERCELL PDX Load Cell
Solutions There is no way to guarantee that a vehicle scale will never face a shutdown. But there are ways to reduce your risk. One option is to add an extra scale. If one scale shuts down, you can keep weighing on the other one. While this helps prevent shutdowns, it is an expensive solution. No matter how many scales you have, the best solution is to make sure they are reliable. POWERCELL® PDX® technology provides the most reliable vehicle weighing available. Its unique load cell network
eliminates junction boxes, the most common cause of scale failure. A built-in predictive diagnostics system warns you of potential problems and makes it easy to solve them before they shut down a scale.
The METTLER TOLEDO return-on- investment (ROI) calculator lets you see how much money downtime can cost you and how much POWERCELL PDX technology can save you.
When purchasing a vehicle scale, look at the total cost of ownership. Downtime is potentially a big part of that cost. Choosing a scale with proven reliability and low maintenance costs can save you plenty of headaches down the road. www.mt.com/vehicle
Visit www.mt.com and use the ROI calculator to estimate your savings: www.mt.com/powercell-reliability
POWERCELL PDX load cells have proven their ability to withstand the lightning strikes that cause costly repairs and downtime for conventional vehicle scales.
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Revive Your Vehicle Scale and Your Profits Are you looking to improve your weighing operation but your budget doesn’t allow for a new vehicle scale? An upgrade might be the answer. Upgrading to POWERCELL® PDX® technology is a cost-effective way to increase the accuracy and reliability of an existing vehicle scale.
Extreme environments and heavy traffic take their toll. After years of use, vehicle scales can become less accurate and require more frequent service. If the weighbridge and foundation are structurally sound, replacing a scale might not be necessary. In many cases, worn out load cells and junction boxes are the problem. Upgrading to POWERCELL PDX load cells can give a scale a new lease on life. It provides the benefits of the latest POWERCELL PDX technology: predictive diagnostics, a watertight network, and unmatched lightning protection. An upgrade can pay for itself with the money it saves by improving weighing accuracy and lowering maintenance costs.
A POWERCELL PDX upgrade can give new life to an old vehicle scale.
Ask your METTLER TOLEDO representative about a vehicle scale upgrade today. www.mt.com/vehicle
www.mt.com/ind-vehicle For more information Mettler-Toledo AG CH-8606 Greifensee Switzerland Tel. + 41 44 944 22 11 Fax + 41 44 944 30 60
