Client: Industrial Equipment Rebuilder in partnership with Old Time Machine (Berlin, WI)
Application: Core Box Machine Control System Retrofit
Industry: Foundry / Industrial Manufacturing
Deliverable: Custom PLC-Based Machine Controller
The Situation
A machine rebuild company acquired aging Shalco U180 core box machines. These are industrial foundry machines used to produce sand cores for metal casting.
Old Time Machine (Berlin, WI) handled the mechanical refurbishment. Their job was to get the machines back to like-new condition for resale into active foundries.
ACS was brought in for the controls.
The original control systems were relay logic panels from the 1970s era. Parts were obsolete. The panels could not be rebuilt. Without working controls, the machines could not go back into service.
The Problem
This was not a simple swap. ACS had to:
- Learn how the machine actually operated, not just what the schematic said
- Understand the full cycle: sand injection, curing with open-flame burners, shakeout, and door release
- Design for a foundry environment — high heat, heavy particulate, continuous duty
- Account for operator safety throughout the entire sequence
A panel shop could have built something to the old relay diagram. That was not enough here.
What ACS Built
ACS wrote new PLC code from scratch and packaged the system in a compact 24×24 enclosure with an integrated touchscreen display. The original controller was roughly four feet tall and three feet wide. The new one fit in a fraction of that space.
What the new controller does:
Two-button operation.
The operator initiates the cycle. The controller handles everything else, advancing through each step only when the prior step is confirmed complete.
Fail-safe sequencing.
The machine uses open-flame burners during the curing cycle. The controller verifies flames are off, the cure timer has completed, and the machine is in a safe position before the door is permitted to open. This protects operators from burns and prevents incomplete cores from being removed early.
Operator-adjustable timing.
Cure time and flame time are settable directly from the touchscreen. No controls engineer needed on site to make adjustments.
Harsh-environment wiring.
Cable routing, conduit selection, and enclosure mounting were designed specifically for foundry heat and contamination, not treated as an afterthought.
Commissioning and Support
During commissioning, the end customer wanted to modify the operation sequence based on their specific process preferences. ACS updated the software to reflect those changes and walked the customer through loading the new code directly onto the PLC.
The machine has been running in production for four years.
The Result
The rebuilt machines were returned to production-ready condition with a modern, maintainable control system. The new controllers eliminated dependency on obsolete relay components and gave operators a cleaner, more intuitive interface than the original ever provided. When the customer needed changes at commissioning, ACS adapted quickly and made sure the team could manage updates on their own going forward.
Why ACS
A panel shop builds to a drawing. ACS engineers the solution when there is no drawing to hand off.
Here is what that looks like in practice:
- ACS studied how the machine actually functioned before designing the replacement
- ACS integrated the controller into a machine it had never seen before and supported testing of the full system
- ACS flagged and solved safety sequencing requirements that were not spelled out in any spec
- ACS accommodated last-minute process changes at commissioning without disruption
- ACS designed for the environment, not just the electrical diagram
The panel is the product. The engineering is what makes it work.
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