CG Drives and Ankong’s service save the day for CHALCO in China

CHALCO (Aluminium Corporation of China Limited) is China’s largest alumina and primary aluminium producer, and the world’s second largest alumina producer. CHALCO is a customer of Ankong, CG Drives’ exclusive partner in China. Ankong has offices in Shenyang, Jinan, Beijing and Shanghai.

Failed drive at CHALCO factory halts production

In the CHALCO factory concerned, which makes electrodes for the melting process, one of the drives failed on a vital extruding machine. The drive, a 315 kW model supplied by a competitor, could not be repaired or replaced, so the factory ground to a halt.

First response: find a temporary solution

Ankong were contacted and they decided to modify a used 690 V, 1200 kW model, which was all that was available at the time. Ankong stepped in and rebuilt the cabinet the same day as a 600 A, 400 V drive, and quickly dispatched it to the CHALCO factory for installation and commissioning. Unfortunately, CHALCO were unable to tune the replacement to their SCADA system.

Telephone support was not successful either, so Ankong decided to send a team – including visiting engineers from CG Drives in Sweden – to help troubleshoot.
The team travelled by car, bullet train, bus and plane in an 11-hour journey across China, finally arriving at the CHALCO factory at 22:00. By 03:00 next morning, the signals had been successfully tuned to the SCADA system and the factory was back in action.

Final action: supply new CG Drives equipment

A new 315 kW Emotron VFX was ordered the same day from Sweden. (CG Drives’ VFX Direct Torque Control technology is the perfect match for the extruding machine’s high-dynamic/high-torque demands.)

Shipped by air the next day to China, the completely new cabinet quickly replaced the temporary solution in the factory. All this was achieved within two weeks of the very first service call.

In brief

Customer CHALCO factory, China 
 Challenge Difficult logistics in replacing a competitor’s drive that caused a halt in the production.
 Solution Rapid response from team of Ankong and CG Drives engineers
Emotron VFX, 315 kW

Benefits

The reliable CG Drives VFX cabinet was installed as replacement and the factory was quickly put back into action.