Full Facility Tour

&nbp;

We’re at the frick facility for Johnson Controls here in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania.

Ed, this is the controls manufacturing area where we make our QuadM HD unity panels, as well as all the other control panels here in Waynesboro. The panels we make here at Frick, they’re they’re used to control compressors and other industrial refrigeration equipment. At Frick is the market leader We have the most advanced panels providing controls, communications capabilities, and all that you need to control your industrial refrigeration facility.

This is the first station in the Quantum HD Unity. Flown line assembly process. Here on the bench, they put the back plate and then assemble the components that have won that back plate. We have a couple sub assemblies that are put together, and then the components that are here within easy reach are all tied together on this back plate. Once this backplate assembly is completed, it’s moved over to the panel.

The enclosure is put here on the cart, and then the sub assemblies are installed in the panel. Each of these sub assemblies are wired together in the panel with the harnesses and wiring. Additional components are added. After those components are added, then the package harness is added here at the bottom of the panel, and this completes the assembly process.

This flow line the panel to be assembled very quickly and allows us to meet our customers’ needs for shipping panels on short notice. Once the quad of HD Unity compressor panel is assembled, the cart in the panel is rolled over here to the test station for testing. The first thing the tester will is he takes the test harnesses and wires those into the panel tying them into the analog and digital boards. Then he runs through the test process the tester will communicate to the analog and digital boards and verify that each of the channels, as well as the wiring is assembled and working properly.

After the hardware is tested, then the software is updated through the Ethernet port to the latest software.

In addition, the set points for this panel that are specific to that customer site are loaded to the panel. This allows the panel to be configured and ready to ship to the customer site for install and be configured for the equipment that it’s going to be installed on.

These are the large assembly tables. Here are the ECS assembly area. These are used to build the large PLC cabinets. They’re used for our PLC plant controls.

This is an Allen Bradley back plate. Here you can see the Allen Bradley hardware. It’s wired up to the HOA switches. This is all used to control a full refrigeration facility.

And these are custom programmed to meet the customer’s needs. Once this PLC back plate is all wired together. The whole back plate is mounted in this cabinet. It’s tested by the PLC programmer.

And then shipped to the customer site. By this large table, the team is building a Quad of HD unity system panel. This is used to control the system parts of the refrigeration facility, including the condenser vessel, evaporator, engine room. This uses the same analog and digital boards that we use on our compressor panels.

It’s all tied together and then controlled from the interface.

This panel is installed in the large cabinet and then shipped to the customer site where it’s wired in and set up to configure those parts of the refrigeration system.

Hi. This is Doug. We’re on a compressor assembly shop floor.

This is a compressor model that we’re building today. It has the discharge housing and the rotor housing bolted together and then right here is the the set of rotors that’ll be going into this machine. The operator will pick these up with a crane. He will bring them back over here after he pivots this table.

This will be vertical. He will drop the two rotors into the machine, then he will both the inlet housing and the slide valve assembly onto this machine button it up and you’ll be ready to go test for leaks over to dip tank. So this is food and beverage assembly. A lot of units coming through here now.

We’re quite busy. As you can see, This unit here, the compressor and motor have now been mounted. All these components down here were added over on the flow line. What happens here after the the motor and the compressor have been mounted, we start running all the tubing, added on other devices to the unit, then what we do is we pump it full of air and we soap it down and check it for leaks.

If we have any leaks, we go ahead and take care of those right away. Then we we hook it up to the vacuum pump, we evacuate the unit We hold that evacuation for two hours. Once it passes the evacuation test, we’ll button it all up and send it over to be washed for paint.

So now we’re in our paint area. So what happens here is after assembly processes complete. We bring the package over here. We set it on this wash pad and we wash it all down real good, get any oils or debris off of it, then we dry it off real good with compressed air, make sure everything’s dry and clean, and then we will mask off any components that we don’t want want to be painted.

Once we have it all masked off, we’ll take it And these doors on this paint booth open up will open up the doors, pick the F and B package up with the crane, and take it into the paint booth. We will close the doors. The painter will go in there. He will spray prime coat on the on the package itself. And then before that dries, he’s able to spray a top coat on there.

Once he sprayed the top coat on there, he exits the booth and he turns on the cure cycle.

Heaters come on and then the paint booth heats up to, I believe, a hundred and forty degrees. It holds that for about an hour and a half. Makes that paint dry real good. Gives it a nice durable and nice look to it.

So we are still here in the final assembly shop. We are in the YPS Bay right now. As you can see, we are building a couple of refrigerant recirculator packages behind me. We have another one here and then another one over here to my right.

So we’re utilizing the YPS bay to build food and beverage packages because our our business is very, very good right now, and we’ve had to repurpose floor space to build food and beverage packages.

Transcript ordered