Turula Engineering Oy, located in Outokumpu, North Karelia, Finland is a machine workshop with decades of experience in the industry, but with a strong vision for the future. Turula Engineering is part of the Arginta Group. Non-stop laser welding For the past few years, Ionix Oy has been implementing Turula Engineering Oy’s production machinery refurbishment projects. The biggest changes in the production machinery have been the modernization actions to a previously acquired CNC machine so that it can be used to make customer-specific products. The need for the modernization was exceptionally clear, as Marko Hyvärinen, Turula Engineering Oy’s Production Development Manager, says: “The old machine froze like an old mobile phone. It could not indicate where the fault was and it took minutes, even hours, to clear it up. We specifically wanted to take care of the whole thing, not just some part of the machine. Thanks to the modernization project, we got a fresh “boy” who keeps going.” Ionix redesigned the machine controls and eliminated unnecessary program cycles. Additionally, the HMI was renewed. The “soul of the machine” was healed The modernization sought a significant increase in efficiency. When high utilization is the goal, the machine cannot be at a standstill. A lot of the customer’s wishes were implemented. Turula Engineering wanted certain functions asked by the machine operators, e.g. regarding product changes. After the modernization, product changes are significantly easier and faster. After the modernization, the machine works as a cathode welding line, responding directly to the customer’s product manufacturing needs with more straightforward programming. Each product to be welded has its own recipe. The machine operator can drive the welding head to a certain welding point and, if necessary, correct the alignment by manual movement and save the new point directly to the recipe without manually editing the program. The start of production of new products becomes faster and easier. In addition, the training of new machine operators is easier since CNC skills are not required. Fault monitoring developed From the point of view of machine operators, the biggest improvement is the fault monitoring. Before the modernization, the machine could stop in the middle of production, but the cause stayed unknown, as the machine did not give any error messages. Now, the modernized machine indicates the errors, which speed up the fault correction and decrease the production downtime. The machine can tell the operator where to find the error and it guides the operator. Marko Hyvärinen, Turula Engineering Oy’s Production Development Manager, recommends Ionix’s expertise: “If you have problems with programmable logic controls and/or the user interface, you should contact Ionix!”
