High-Speed Camera Illuminates Stamping Stacker Problems

Engineers at Baldor Electric Co. lucked out when they recently won a portable high-speed video camera in a contest sponsored by Southern Vision Systems Inc. The battery-powered device helped them noodle out difficulties on a superfast stacker for metal stampings.

Baldor engineers used the Southern Vision Systems StreamView LR high-speed camera on a stacking system for stator laminations that come off the end of the die on a press line. This stacker is the first of it’s kind. It utilizes six Baldor servomotors and the latest generation of Baldor controls. After installation, the stacker had to be timed to the press at 220 strokes/min. The laminations accumulate on an arbor before they are stacked. This arbor had to be modified to eliminate stacking errors. Both issues were easy to resolve with the use of the high-speed camera.

Two of the servomotors move fingers, which come in to support the stacking arbor while a finished stack is moved away. These fingers must enter between press strokes without hitting the lamination that is falling down the arbor. Baldor personnel watched the high-speed video to determine when to let the fingers advance.

The stacking-arbor modification took longer, but would have been purely guesswork without the highspeed camera, say Baldor personnel. The lamination is sliced off at the end of the die and falls onto the arbor. The high-speed camera revealed that the lamination actually moves down the arbor in waves, analogous to a leaf falling from a tree. The arbor had to be modified accordingly so each lamination was clear before the next one advanced onto the arbor. The camera also proved that it was necessary to alter the design of the punch that cuts off the lamination at the arbor.