Software allows remote support of welding machines

GE Fanuc's Cimplicity software has provided a new automation concept for a range of radio frequency/thermo contact welding machines.

Colpitt, in the Netherlands, is a manufacturer of radio frequency/thermo contact welding machines.

It is a leading company in the manufacture of fully automated equipment designed to produce medical bags, such as intravenous or blood bags, at rates of up to 5000 bags per hour.

Customers are demanding better automated control and feedback of data from their machines.

GE Fanuc's Cimplicity software and 90-30 PLCs are used to help meet the high accuracy and safety requirements of the medical industry.

In 1998, Colpitt called on the expertise of Conquest Automation to work on a new automation concept for its machines.

It demanded better controls, motion, diagnostics and error messages and requested more user-friendly interfaces.

GE Fanuc's Cimplicity and GE Fanuc PLCs have met all these requirements.

The latest intravenous (IV) bag production machine, the Colpitt 8s-4/6up, has an eight-station rotary table.

The system is designed to manufacture a large range of IV bag sizes.

Though this necessitates many setup parameters which used to be carried out manually, the new machine features a fully automated set-up.

All settings and positions are stored as Cimplicity Recipes, moving all stations to the required position with the press of a button on the touch screen.

This maximises the machine time available for full production.

The machine constructs the bag in eight steps.

The first station feeds flat or tubular plastic from a roll onto the turntable.

During this movement the material is printed and cut to within narrow tolerances.

The second, third and fourth stations feed tubes and different types of ports onto welding mandrels, mounted on the rotary table.

The fifth station positions the tubes and ports within the bag with a high accuracy.

The sixth and seventh stations seal the tubes and the bags with radio frequency (RF) energy.

Finally the bags are stacked onto a conveyor belt.

This whole bag production process takes 5.5s.

Every part of the machine is monitored constantly by the 90-30 PLC.

The RF generator status, plus any malfunctions, position errors or bad products that occur, are displayed on the touch screen.

Conquest Automation created a fault-finding program within Cimplicity which allows the operator to locate the problem area on a screen displaying a virtual machine.

When clicking the highlighted area, Cimplicity will display a detailed screen of the station with the part that is malfunctioning and it will offer a solution to the problem.

This feature saves the operator a lot of time in finding and solving the problem.

On this particular machine, 25kW RF generators are used, operating at 27MHz.

Although they produce a lot of power, the energy must be accurately controlled in order to ensure reliable welding every time.

Colpitt developed an electronic controller to simplify the generator set-up procedures.

It uses CIMPLICITY in conjunction with the GE Fanuc 90-30 PLC.

Cimplicity WebView enables machine monitoring at a distance Conquest Automation has taken advantage of other facilities offered by Cimplicity.

WebView enables technicians to monitor the machine settings from their office.

Production data from the machine, such as material usage, production rates, downtime and diagnosis of errors, are captured by Cimplicity and can be uploaded onto a company network for analysis by Excel.

As many of Colpitt's customers are using, or planning to use MRP, or ERP systems, Conquest Automation is working on the integration of the information from the Colpitt machine into these planning systems.

"Many production companies are unaware of the capabilities of these latest machines, and are still relying on paper forms which are filled in after each batch.

With the increasing demands of flexibility in production, companies need production statistics at all times of the day.

Cimplicity can satisfy those demands", Michel Leppink of Conquest Automation explained.

Machines are shipped all over the world.

Customers in the Far East and in South America are not completely familiar with production machines like the Colpitt machine.

Also, the addition of new high-tech features on the machines increases the needs for technical support.

Long distances between Colpitt and its customers could create losses in production before a specialised technician arrives.

For this reason Conquest Automation developed, together with GE Fanuc's Master Distributor for the Netherlands, TriMation, a system that can overcome these kind of problems.

The system is called the "remote support system" and works in harmony with the GE Fanuc systems.

All electronic devices are connected through a TCP/IP network onto this system.

With dial-up connection, all systems can be easily monitored or altered from a long distance.

With the new VersaPro programming software and the WebView of Cimplicity and some customised programming by Conquest Automation, the complete control of the machine can be directed to the service department of Colpitt.

A remotely controllable high-resolution camera, also a part of this system, gives a complete view of the machine to guarantee safe intervention.

The camera can also be positioned to give the engineers a detailed image of the problem area.

This system has already saved customers and manufacturers a lot of time and money.

Instead of solving the problem with a service technician, it can be solved with a team of engineers "Since introducing GE Fanuc PLCs and Cimplicity software, we have been able to fulfill fulfil all our customers' needs without any problems.

As new features are announced we are able to offer enhanced automation capabilities.

Though we have used a number of other suppliers, GE Fanuc is, in our opinion, always one-step-ahead of the competition", added Michel Leppink.

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