One of the UK’s largest
food manufacturing companies, who operate a number of state of the art
food manufacturing plants throughout the UK, approached us with a project that involved an upgrade to multiple
touchscreen panel PCs for processing lines in order to maintain and optimise overall performance and decision-making on the plant floor.
Because of the harsh environment and sub-zero temperature shock involved in hygienically cleaning
food production equipment, it was paramount that the
panel PCs conform to
IP69K ingress rating and were also capable of withstanding wide temperature extremes. As chemical wash down is also a daily process in this environment, high grade SUS316
stainless steel was required for the
panel PC chassis to ensure corrosion was not an issue.
The hardware needed to be capable of tolerating these extreme conditions without compromising functionality and
display resolution, as well as being fully integrated into existing systems and cabling.
The solution
Our experienced Technical Account Managers offered a
panel PC solution from
Axiomtek, which boasted a fully
IP69K rated SUS316
stainless steel enclosure capable of enduring the harsh chemical cleaning and freezing temperatures of the processing plant.
One of the main project challenges was the existing site infrastructure. Since there were some challenges in fitting standard panels within the existing production lines, our design engineers had to liaise closely with our
manufacturing partners to provide a bespoke solution for our customer, incorporating custom
I/O ports and
waterproof cables to accommodate the pin outs of the various peripheral devices and power supplies used at each site. This allowed the same
panel PCs to be used at each site, giving commonality of spares, whilst also giving flexibility in connectivity allowing each site to continue to use their own unique scanners, weight scales and RFID platform.
These bespoke
panel PCs were then packaged as a unique bill of materials for ease of future ordering and delivered on-time for installation into the
manufacturing processing lines.
For more information
click here to get in touch, or speak to one of our technical sales team by calling 01782 337 800.