Electrical engineering at Hahn Automation Group

Curved or in a portrait format, with two or three sections or even across the full width of the windscreen: displays are the visualisation and control element in the driver’s cockpit. Automobile manufacturers and their suppliers are constantly coming up with new ideas for this very flexible human-vehicle interface. Effective and efficient manufacturers of plant systems for highly automated manufacturing are laying the groundwork to ensure that the new generation of such displays can be mass produced in the highest quality. Hahn Automation Group is at the forefront of this demanding field.

At the company’s headquarters in Rheinböllen, in southwestern Germany (as well as at other facilities around the world affiliated with the group of companies), there are a wide variety of systems for the automated manufacturing of complex components used in production or testing – not just parts for vehicle interiors. Hahn Automation Group systems also produce sophisticated components for electronics and for medical technology – from pipettes to pacemakers. All are characterised by a high degree of automation and short cycle times – and each system is unique unto itself.

Project: The future of control cabinet production – machines that do the cabling

Two years ago, with the introduction of EPLAN Pro Panel, the company managers developed a concept for advancing in-house control cabinet production, which takes place at the facilities in Rheinböllen, Germany, and Sveta Nedelja, Croatia. The concept also dealt with an area outside of the control cabinet: laying cables on the plant systems themselves. Dirk Scherer: “We lay a large number of cables for each plant system, including expensive servo cables. If the lengths of these have only been approximated, either extra cable goes to waste or sometimes a cable is too short. And the installation routes for the cables can be random and may not end up being optimal. We wanted to standardise this and make the process more efficient.”

Machine cabling in practice – beta testing Cable proD

So it was a good thing that EPLAN was planning the market launch of just the right tool for precisely this task: Cable proD. This CAD tool can lay cables virtually in the field and automatically determines both the required cable length and the exact installation routing – based on the schematics from the MCAD data. The exact lengths are then fed back into the EPLAN Project. 

Hahn Automation Group agreed with EPLAN to test Cable proD on the specific example of a system for the automated production of automotive components with a cycle time of 41 seconds. Eighteen workstations here must be supplied with power and signals, and because some of the work steps are complex (including cold shrinking with liquid nitrogen, for example), around three hundred sensor cables, fifty power cables and eleven servo cables had to be laid.

The results: “Right the first time” instead of “Wrong again and again”

The test results thoroughly convinced Hahn Automation Group. Dirk Scherer: “The cables are bundled and routed through cable channels in 3D. The system reliably determines the cable lengths, so you don’t have to measure beforehand or make corrections after the fact. And our technicians can work quickly without making any mistakes because the routing paths are displayed in the viewer.” Another advantage is that the expensive servo cables can be produced without any waste, saving money and copper, and doing it all with lower overall carbon dioxide emissions.

Improved service as well

Hahn Automation Group also sees improvements at yet another level – for service and maintenance. Dirk Scherer: “Many of the cables in our systems are in constant motion and are therefore subject to wear and tear. That means that our clients order replacement cables that we have to replicate. When the exact length of those cables is already recorded, we can produce a perfectly fitting cable set and offer the client quick service with the exact cable or cables they need.” This naturally also holds true for cables for the energy chain – and also when a replacement set is required for a new product or a new tool. The cables can be manufactured to the same standards as the existing ones.