23 Dec Cooling tunnel with transport system
The company Glacio from Beerse, Kempen, is an ice company specialized in producing ice cream trays and special ice cream products. For the modernization of a production line for ice cream trays they called on the knowledge and experience of AASYS.
AASYS supported the engineering and did the complete software development. On this production line the ice cream trays go from the filling machine to the outfeed for packaging. The transport system should be flexible to handle different types and formats of trays. This transport system consists of 21 servo axles, 17 Danfoss frequency drives for AC Synchronous permanent magnet motors, pneumatic actors and other digital IO.
For the control unit and servo’s AASYS relies on the hardware and software from Sigmatek. The super-fast communication between PLC, servo drives and remote IO in 12 cabinets is guaranteed by the VARAN bus system. In order to get diagnostics and flexible communication with the frequency drives the communication via CANopen is used.
To achieve certain movements like a gantry several servo’s has to work together. AASYS has developed kinematic models to make this possible. Therefor AASYS can invoke its experience with delta robots and gantry’s.
Because safety is indispensable in a production line with this much moving parts there has been chosen for a decentralized safety network. A network of 13 safety cpu’s is established via the VARAN network.
The brain of the hole installation is one IPC with all plc code, visualization and safety communication. The cycle times and communication with the IPC get speeds up to 1ms.
Besides the transport system also the software for the cooling tunnel was completely renewed by AASYS.
Aslo read the article “Mechatronics & Machine” (PDF – 3MB – dutch)