Product category:
Manufacturing Machinery and Plant Equipment
News Release from: Baldor UK | Subject: Multi-axis motion control systems
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 10 January 2002
Chocolate machines refurbished with new
controls
Baldor has supplied three multi-axis motion control systems to Premier Packaging to upgrade three Cadbury chocolate bar wrapping/cartoning machines in Canada
Baldor has supplied three multi-axis motion control systems to Premier Packaging The systems are being used to upgrade three Cadbury chocolate bar wrapping/cartoning machines
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 5 Mar 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Neodymium servo motors cut cost of precision
Baldor has launched a new range of brushless servo motors for precision motion control applications, based on rare-earth neodymium iron boron magnets, which delivers a useful saving
The PCI motion board with more I/O
This I/O-rich PCI motion board delivers complete machine control solutions - drives rotary/linear motors, cuts TTM for packaging, electronic, CNC, robotics - high-level language and Windows support
The refurbished machines are destined for Canada, where Cadbury is introducing flow wrappers on its popular Dairy Milk bar, in place of the traditional foil wrapper and paper label.
The project was extremely time sensitive, and Premier Packaging refurbished the machines in around four months, and imposed an even tighter schedule on its sub-contractors - which Baldor met by employing the multi-tasking features of the Mint motion control language.
Baldor's role in this project was to provide a motion control subsystem to transfer and carton flow-wrapped chocolate bars.
Three servo motor axes are employed for this.
One controls a 'paddle' which sweeps bars through 90 degrees into a flighted conveyor.
Further reading
Smart linear motor control configured in minutes
Smart linear motor controller can be configured in minutes - indexing/positioning software is ideal for many linear applications - auto-tunes for brushless motors via pull-down library menu
Feather plucking machinery gets washdown motors
Grampian Foods has installed Baldor's special washdown-duty motors to refurbish feather plucking machinery at several of its UK sites - in a move designed to optimise reliability.
120 to 750W motors engineered to be cost-effective
Baldor has launched a new range of commercial-duty motors which are engineered to provide cost-effective solutions for applications requiring low to medium starting torques.
Two further axes collate bars into groups on a feedchain, and then actuate paddles which transfer the group into a 'lowerator' - simultaneously moving the lowerator on a step for depositing the group into a carton.
The system is controlled by the Mint-compatible NextMove-BX, a standalone motion controller which comes with I/O, allowing it to also handle the various sensors in this application.
Development time was greatly reduced by means of Mint's multi-tasking capability.
Latest job opportunities
Electrical, Mechanical, Maintenance Engineer
Mechanical Fitter, Diesel Fitter, Mechanical Technician, Maintenance Engineer X4
Job Title: Electrical, Mechanical, Maintenance Engineer
Area: East London, Essex, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, London, Berkshire, Middlesex,...
(Embedded) Electronics Design Engineers - Graduates to Senior
(Embedded) Electronics Design Engineers - Avon Ongoing business growth at this worl leading company has created a number of challenging and rewarding career opportunities to appeal to exceptional Electronics Design Engineers with varying levels of...
Multi Skilled Maintenance Engineer, Maintenance Engineer
Maintenance Engineer (FOOD/FMCG)
Job Title: Multi Skilled Maintenance Engineer, Maintenance Engineer
Area: Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, London, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, South East
Salary: ...
Baldor used this feature to divide the transfer and cartoning process into five separate tasks: start paddles, stop paddles (for rejects), feed feedchain, lower lowerator, and manage the man-machine interface.
These software tasks were then worked on, in parallel, by several application engineers, allowing a software prototype to be written and trialed in less than a week.
This design was then optimised and integrated with the hardware - including three BSM brushless AC servo motors, three Flex drives, a NextMove BX motion controller and various sensors - and delivered to Premier Packaging for commissioning.
"This project demonstrates that it's possible to refurbish older mechanically-based packaging machines easily," says Peter Broughton, Sales Engineer with Premier Packaging.
"In this instance the machines were renovated with advanced electronic controls supporting software-based reconfiguration, for an outlay which is just a small fraction of the cost and time it would have cost to develop a new solution from scratch.
For us, speed was an overriding objective, and Baldor's application engineering service played an important role in keeping the project on track".
The three new machines are capable of flow wrapping and cartoning around 1000 bars per minute.
The availability of ready-to-use application examples played a key role in Baldor's rapid turnaround of the transfer and cartoning system.
This was simplified by the high level 'keywords' in Mint, which offer a ready-programmed basis for many commonly required movements.
Amongst the keywords used in this project was one of the Follow group to control the sweep paddle; an electronically clutched gear ratio is implemented to allow a following task with ramped starts and stops via the Followmode keyword.
Fly is also used for control of the feedchain axis.
This keyword provides a flying shear action which gives an idealised multi-segmented motion profile for controlling the action of the lugs that collate the bars into groups.
"Mint's multi-tasking trimmed several weeks development time off this project," adds Stuart Bratton, Project Engineer for Baldor.
"The asynchronous aspects of the axes on this process would have made it quite a complex problem to deal with using traditional software techniques.
This kind of software advance is key to reducing the time to market for complex projects, as OEMs build more and more features into their machinery." He also noted that NextMove-BX's built in I/O and fieldbus capabilities allowed the motion controller to provide a complete solution, including the user interface and the inputs and outputs needed for the various sensing tasks.
In this instance, one of the controller's dual CAN ports is used to interface to a remote man-machine interface panel using the CANopen protocol. Request a free brochure from Baldor UK ...
(This was Engineeringtalk's Top Story on 9 January 2002).
• Baldor UK: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Engineeringtalk email newsletter
• Engineeringtalk Home Page
