#6 Grinder is used to remove surface defects from steel billets with dimensions of 6 x 6 inches square and 40 feet in length; the Grinder is a material processing bottleneck in the billet conditioning facility

An existing Allen Bradley PLC 5/15 provides machine control and product handling; expanded PLC data collection captures spindle motor start/stop times, motor loads, and grinder car load and unload times; motor loads are used to determine actual grinder contact time with each billet

PLC data is transmitted to a Level 2 VAX computer and correlated with work crew, operating turn, and steel grade information to produce production reports; hourly summaries show amount of time the machine is actually grinding, amount of time spent loading and unloading the machine, and the amount of non-productive time

Increased productivity thru better management of operating crews and resulting machine throughput improvements

Prolonged machine life is possible by using motor load data feedback to operators to prevent overloading the motor during contact