Two fiber-optic towers side by side, seen from the ground floor: the steel frame with cross bracing at the base, the stainless-steel furnaces, an operator panel with pushbuttons for each tower, the stack lights and the safety fences on either side.
The two towers, from the ground floor.

Project · Fiber optics

The fiber-optic draw towers. Five gases, one furnace, two floors.

Twin towers, two floors high, with process gases, furnace and axes to watch all at once. We built the automation that lets you read them from a single screen.

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Client
Confidential
Industry
Cable & fiber optics
Machines
Twin towers
Year
2018

The challenge

Two floors of machinery. One person at the screen.

  1. 01

    The tower runs through two floors. At the top sits the motor of the vertical axis, which moves in millimeters per minute.

  2. 02

    In the middle, the furnace: three zones plus a lower one, the muffle turning and five gases flowing in as the recipe calls for them.

  3. 03

    On the ground floor, the operator faces one panel. Everything that happens upstairs has to reach it: 30 values and 31 states, across valves, doors, axes and furnace.

Drawing of a fiber-optic tower running up through the upper floor deck: at the top, the beam with the vertical-axis motor, the screw, the carriage and the horizontal-axis arm, with the rod hanging from it; in the middle, the furnace cut open, with the muffle inside and four collars for the three zones plus the lower one; from the left, the five gases N2, SF6, HE, O2 and CL2 come in, each with its own valve, and on the right the pipe runs out to the scrubber; the fence gates on both floors. On the ground floor, the operator panel with a person in front of it, to scale. A signal line runs down the upright from the top to the panel. Behind, lighter, the twin tower.
Values to read
30
States to watch
31
Screens
just one

A door open upstairs, an axis out of position, a furnace zone that won’t heat up. The operator has to know right away, without leaving the panel.

The solution

The whole tower on one page. And every alarm has a name.

Gases, valves, axes, furnace and safety share one process page, with the recipe and the phase at the top. One glance tells you where the tower is.

The process page

Five gases, twenty valves. One glance.

Each gas keeps its own color along the whole line, and every valve changes color with its state: you read them before the numbers.

The process page of tower M1, redrawn from the real screen: recipe and active phase at the top; in the middle, the five gas lines N2, SF6, HE, O2 and CL2 with twenty valves, pressures and flows, the scrubber and the muffle; on the right, the X and Z axes, the muffle rotation, the door safety on both floors and the four furnace zones.
Redrawn from the real screen of October 31, 2018.
The operator panel of one tower: touch screen, two rows of pushbuttons with the emergency stop, and the green, amber and red stack light.

One panel per tower

Screen, pushbuttons and stack light in one place, at eye level.

The alarm page on the panel, with rows colored by severity, and the red stack light lit above the screen.

Alarms in plain words

Date, time, state and text. Like “Warning: ground-floor panel door.”

The back of the open panel: the pushbutton contacts wired with labeled blue wires, the terminal strip at the bottom and the green network cable running to the screen.

Behind the panel

Every pushbutton wired and labeled, the screen networked with the rest of the machine.

What we brought

From the first schematic to start-⁠up on the tower. One point of contact.

  1. 01

    The electrical schematic

    Power, controls and signals across both floors: gases, furnace, axes and safety on paper before work starts on site.

    Electrical engineering
  2. 02

    Panels and controls

    One panel per tower and the pushbutton stations on the columns, wired neatly with every wire labeled.

    Control panel building
  3. 03

    Software and screens

    Recipe, phases, axes, gases and furnace in a single logic. And a process page that shows them together.

    PLC and HMI software
  4. 04

    Tests and commissioning

    Signals, sequences and safety tested first. Then start-up, on the tower.

    Testing and start-up

The photos

Seven photos of the project. From the bare frame to the panel powered up.

Every photo opens full screen.

Along the same chain

After the fiber, the tube. Then the sea. Two projects close to this one.

Tube line in the workshop: a row of green stations with yellow wheels, each with its own motor, and the control panels at the back.

The tube

The tube line

Many stations, each with its own motor, and the same tension from the first to the last.

The project
The deck of the Ulisse vessel: the circular carousel holding the cable, the arched guide crane, the control cabin and the red winches.

The sea

The Ulisse vessel

Carousel, caterpillar, crane and winches on the same cable as it goes into the sea.

The project

The first step

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