CPS® and VAHLE Powercom® - decisive components of the assembly line

VAHLE keeps the mounting of engines and gearboxes on the go at BMW

Since many years, the BMW plant in Munich cannot be imagined without the products of the Kamen-based company VAHLE. With its innovative developments, VAHLE ensures not only "movement" within the assembly halls for the actual core of the production process, namely, mounting the engines and gearboxes in the vehicles.

A 285-m long assembly line was already commissioned in February 2000 in the BMW plant in Munich. It has two levels. In the first construction phase, 49 mounting trolleys convey the car engines to the various workplaces. The power to these trolleys is guaranteed by "CPS®", the contactless power supply developed by VAHLE.
Each vehicle is equipped with a 1.5 KW flat pick-up and a corresponding control electronics system that supplies an output voltage of 560 VDC and an auxiliary voltage of 24 VDC.

VAHLE products were convincing

The Munich planners were quickly convinced by this investment and by the VAHLE products.
A second construction phase extended the assembly line by a further 81 metres. This section has nine additional vehicles and integrates the gearbox mounting stage into the production process. Furthermore, in the second level, a further production line with a length of 55 metres, 1.5 KW pick-ups and 14 vehicles was constructed. The objective is that after a few further processing steps, the engine with the gearbox and axle is transferred here.
In the meantime, all this has been implemented and everything is functioning.

Integration of VAHLE Powercom^®

A particularly important component of the construction phase completed at the beginning of this year: the conversion of the previously used wireless data transmission to a CPS®-integrated data transmission by means of the "VAHLE-Powercom CPS®". The transmitted data are used to control the vehicles as well as the screwdrivers at the individual workplaces. All of the 72(!) vehicles used on the assembly line communicate absolutely interference-free via this system using a Profibus DP with a data transmission speed of 19.2 KB/second. These transmission rates are enormous. While the signal recycling time of the old system with 58 vehicles was 1.5 to 2 seconds, this value is reduced to a maximum of 300 milliseconds for the new system equipped with 14 vehicles. This is further evidence for the efficiency of plants equipped with VAHLE quality.

VAHLE technology keeps the assembly trolleys on the go.