Make sure that the hydraulic valve and hose are properly installed
September 15, 2019
Caterpillar, the world's maker of construction machinery, relies on a real-time positioning system at a heavy equipment factory in Belgium to ensure the correct installation of hydraulic valves and hoses. When workers assemble hydraulic valves at the Caterpillar Belgium factory, they use tweezers to tighten the conduit (made of rubber and steel) to the valve. Valves - Installed on construction vehicles made by Caterpillar - the size of a car engine. To secure the catheter to the valve and to ensure proper valve operation, the worker must tighten the bolt with a specified amount of torque - about 300 Nm. Before using the RFID system, workers had been tightening the bolts manually with a tweezers and could not confirm that the torque reached the correct Newton meters. Caterpillar used the Protrac, a software system provided by DeJaeger Automation, a Belgian industrial software company, on the assembly line to track the assembly and corresponding staffing and assembly time for each part. The worker enters his ID code and details of the work to be performed on the software running on the container station PC, as well as the serial number of the planned installation component. Before using RFID, the tightness of the catheter installation can only be determined by the staff's judgment. The employee painted the part with the marking of the pigment and the visual connection closely. About 4,300 workers at the plant build medium and large excavators and wheel loaders. Caterpillar and DeJaeger met in 2008, Caterpillar project manager Degraux said the two companies decided to work together to develop a cost-effective RFID system. In December 2008, DeJaeger installed RFID readers in the main Caterpillar high-pressure hydraulic valve assembly area. The RFID system works with Protrac software. In the meantime, the company replaced the manual torsion pliers with 6 sets of electronic torsion pliers with active RFID tags. Each wrench is designed for a specific packing area and is preset for a specific torque. When the worker reaches the maximum valve preset force, the wrench starts ticking, indicating that the catheter is properly installed and the applied torque is transmitted to the corresponding PC. By applying RFID tags on each wrench, the real-time positioning system ensures that the correct wrench is used at the correct location.
