Current News

July 2011

Flow Meter Replacement Reduces Maintenance Time by 96%

Waukee Engineering, a member of United Process Controls, received an order for its Flo-Tronic Plus™ flow meters from Charter Steel, a leading US supplier of carbon and alloy steel wire products. The existing variable area flow meters used on the super-sized batch furnaces were subject to loss of signal accuracy due to process fouling. Significant maintenance was required to restore signal accuracy and reliability; shop operators would flush the sight glass tube and replace the contaminated fluid weekly. As part of the Charter Steel’s initiative to reduce maintenance costs, Waukee outfitted ten furnaces with Flo-Tronic Plus™ flow meters and implemented a more cost-effective maintenance schedule that reduced maintenance time by 96%. The new flow meters are relatively low maintenance owing to the innovative magnetic flow sensing technology that provides excellent immunity to dirty oil and only require a bi-annual service.

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June 2011

Waukee Engineering Upgrades ISO/IEC 17025 Certified Laboratory

Waukee Engineering Company, a leader in flow meters and controls and a member of United Process Controls, has upgraded its ISO/IEC 17025:2005 certified in-house laboratory in Milwaukee, WI. Along with remodeling the calibration laboratory, investments were made to upgrade to higher accuracy testing instrumentation, which reflects the company’s strong commitment to technical competence and the quality of its calibration and testing services. Waukee has provided ISO/IEC 17025 certified services since 2003, and this past March successfully renewed its accreditation.
ISO/IEC 17025:2005 is the most recognized form of laboratory accreditation globally. It provides validation that Waukee calibration and testing services are performed to appropriate standards and assures customers that the flow meters they purchase will meet their expectations and standard of quality. Waukee Flo-Meters™ are typically used in the measurement of industrial gasses and liquids in the heat treating industry.
"The investment will improve efficiencies and lead-times, as well as allow for calibration to a higher degree of accuracy, ensuring our customers are receiving nothing but the highest quality of product. And with re-accreditation on hand, Waukee continues its original commitment to ensure accurate and repeatable test results of its flow meters. Test data from our accredited laboratory is readily accepted by our local and overseas customers, which helps reduce costs by avoiding expensive retesting.” said Kevin Therrian, Engineering Manager of Waukee Engineering. “We provide a wide range of services performed in an environmentally controlled laboratory using the latest equipment and technology. Our personnel calibrate, repair, and test gas and liquid Flo-Meters™ for companies across the globe to ISO 17025 standard with results that are traceable to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).”

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May 2011

New VALVE-TRONIC PLUS™  Flow Controller

The Valve-Tronic Plus™ from Waukee Engineering, a member of United Process Controls, is a next generation flow controller developed for demanding industrial applications that require accurate measurement and flow control. It is designed for practically maintenance- free reliability and can operate as a stand-alone solution for basic applications or integrated with a process control system or SCADA for automatic flow control.
One innovative feature is the built-in web interface for easy access to parameter settings, event logs and troubleshooting. Other features include a proprietary magnetic flow sensing technology that makes the flow controller insensitive to dirty oil, standard Modbus TCP for easy integration with control systems, and advanced polynomial calibration for high accuracy over the entire range of the meter.
Valve-Tronic Plus™ also offers built-in PID control between the flow sensor and the valve control unit for immunity from incoming gas supply pressure fluctuations, as well as a flow totalization feature that provides total gas consumption of a process, and an optional Temperature / Pressure compensation that ensures real-time correction for optimum accuracy of flow measurement at all times.

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March 2011

Baldor Electric Unifies Heat Treat Operations

United Process Controls completed a turnkey project for Baldor Electric to upgrade furnace controls and automate heat treat operations at the company’s Greenville, SC plant. After many years of satisfactory service, MMI legacy controller-based systems of tempering and carburizing furnaces used for heat treating gearbox components had become obsolete. Reliability and downtime were becoming a serious concern, and the old control systems had limitations in meeting the company's new automation strategy and traceability requirements. To optimize and centralize control, UPC scrapped the old control consoles and replaced them with compact, state-of-the-art control systems based on the Protherm 600 programmable controllers for monitoring and controlling all furnace process parameters. The scope of the control upgrade also included PLCs, motor controls for fans, conveyors, oil and agitators, VRT controls, supervisory flame pilots, SCR heater controllers, and Waukee's AccuBlendor™ endothermic generator systems with turndown control for just-in-time delivery of mixed gases. All controllers and control systems are interfaced with the Protherm 9800 production management software, which performs data acquisition, data analysis, alarms and recipe management, monitoring, and much more. The Protherm 9800 also allows live, real-time remote viewing and control of furnace control systems, and it incorporates modules for laboratory documentation and process design. The 'Quality Control Lab' documentation module lets operators review and assess laboratory and testing information. The Diffusion module provides two-part functionality. First, it takes the complexities out of the creation, modeling and optimization of carburizing processes; and second, it can execute and control a carburizing treatment in a fully automatic self-correcting mode.

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Dec. 2009

UPC Consolidates its Probe/Sensor Manufacturing Operations

In a move to streamline operations, United Process Controls (UPC) has consolidated its probe/sensor manufacturing and testing facilities in the USA. Operations at Furnace Control Corp. (FCC) in Milwaukee were relocated and integrated into UPC’s North American Automation Hub in Cincinnati, OH. FCC will continue to work, develop, and market their individual brand from this new locale, and take full advantage of the advanced capabilities of the Cincinnati ISO certified facility. This move will improve on the service quality and timeliness of FCC probe/sensor testing and repairs. The drop-off and pick-up point in Milwaukee however will be maintained. In addition to providing a fast turnaround, FCC probes/sensors are now manufactured, tested and certified under the specifications of ISO 9001:2009, 17025, TUV, and CE. This cohesive relationship has also led to an expanded team of technical service personnel cross-trained to handle all UPC sensor/probe lines.

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Nov. 2009

Waukee Engineering Opens Sales & Service Centers in China

Waukee, a leader in flow meters and controls and a member of United Process Controls, has recently made substantial investments to boost its presence in China. The investment is directly tied to United Process Controls’ strategic initiatives to build a diverse portfolio of heat treating and combustion solutions to this increasing growth area. The company’s Beijing center provides full service and repair of flow meters and control equipment, while both the Beijing and Shanghai offices offer field engineering services for on-site assistance and calibrations. These two locations will help to better serve customers throughout Southeast Asia by offering faster service turnaround and reducing overall maintenance costs.

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Nov 2009

UPC Appoints New Representative for California

US-based industrial process control and automation provider, United Process Controls (UPC), has named Exim Engineering Inc. based in Anaheim, CA as its newest representative. Exim Engineering Inc., which will represents UPC in California, joins ten other U.S. representatives in offering UPC products to the heat treating industry.

Exim Engineering, whose experience includes supplying commercial and captive heat treaters with insulation materials and other components for high temperature furnaces, is diversifying its business operations by offering value-added process control equipment and solutions. In addition to local access and support for California’s heat treaters, Exim Engineering will help its customers increase the efficiency of their furnaces, lower operational costs and reduce pollutants with better process controls, technology and know-how.

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July 2009

New Gas Analyzer Measures Both Endothermic and Exothermic Atmospheres

Furnace Control Corp, a member of United Process Controls, has released a new upgrade of the FurnaceDoctor®-CE, a portable infrared gas analyzer for heat treatments.

The new FurnaceDoctor®-CE features extended measurement ranges for both endothermic and exothermic furnace atmospheres. Users can switch between ranges on-the-fly with the confidence that the system performance will be unaffected. The unit maintains calibration data for both ranges. This development also means that customers require only one analyzer for all heat treating processes.

In addition to being an industry standard tool used in carburizing or hardening applications, this new capability allows the FurnaceDoctor®-CE to be used for verifying any process that uses “lean” or “rich” exothermic atmospheres such as bright annealing, brazing, or lamination annealing.

The FurnaceDoctor®-CE is available as a stand-alone analyzer or as a “system control analyzer”.

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Mar. 2009

Waukee Introduces Enhanced Firmware for its Valve-Tronic^TM and SAV^TM

Waukee Engineering has released a new firmware upgrade for its family of Valve-Tronic^TM flo-meters and SAV^TM control valves. The enhanced firmware provides users with improved functionality and control features such as three programmable alarm contacts, High- and Low-flow alarms, and Diagnostic Error Codes.

The firmware’s programmable logic operation makes it possible to implement alarm functions for even more points including Valve Open, Valve Closed, High Flow, Low Flow, Error, and Auto/Manual Mode. This offers customers the flexibility to create new alarm conditions or to modify set points with simple ‘do-it-yourself’ programming. Diagnostic Error Codes allow the user to correctly diagnose the root cause of valve failures and the recommended corrective action(s) to be taken. This time- and money-saving feature allows for faster debugging and rapid downtime recovery.

Valve-TronicTM and SAVTM are currently shipped with the new firmware, which is also available as an upgrade to customers of units purchased after 2002. Please contact Waukee Engineering at 414-462-8200 for pricing and compatibility.

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Sept. 2007

Four Companies join to form United Process Controls

UNITED PROCESS CONTROLS is a new alliance of four recognized companies within the heat treating industry (Furnace Controls, Marathon Monitors, Process-Electronic and Waukee Engineering) that share a common vision: first, to fill the needs of customers for industry-leading control solutions, and second to enable customers to get easy-to-access support through our worldwide sales and services network. www.group-upc.com

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© Waukee Engineering 2011