We have a customer who cuts material off of their coils with the front shear prior to threading them into the machine. Because the controller has no knowledge of the coil, they are currently using a paper system to track that material. However, they want Eclipse to track it. They asked for a system where the controller would request the operator enter in the part length and number of parts after the new coil had been identified.

Here is what we did:

While the coil is Tailed Out we will count Manual Front Shear operations. When the coil is identified, if the number of Manual Front Shear operations is non-zero, we will display a screen that asks them what happend. It has three data entry fields, Number of Equal Length Cuts, Length of Equal Cuts and Sum of Additional Cuts.

The Number of Equal Length Cuts field is pre-populated with the number of detected Manual Front Shear operations. If they need to adjust the Number of Equal Length Cuts they have that capability.

If they are in the habit of making a number of equal length parts they can enter that length into the Length of Equal Cuts field and we will calculate and display a sub total by multiplying the number of parts by the length.

If instead, or in addition to, they have made other non-equal length parts they can enter the sum total of those parts into the Sum of Additional Cuts field. The sub-total of equal length cuts and the Sum of Additional Cuts are added together and displayed as the Total Sum of All Cuts.

When they have entered everything they can press the Done button on the screen and the controller will add the Total Sum of All Cuts to the scrap accumulator for the coil, in addition to all of the other scrap accumulators. A Manual Shear production record is also generated to report the material to Eclipse. The number of Manual Front Shear operations is then zeroed out to restart the process for the next Tail Out.