Cutting Solution Required - #PLC #Controls #Servo

Hi everybody.

Please see the attached image for the problem overview and share your ideas.


All help will be greatly appreciated.


Thanks.

How about using a PLC to do this.

What have you tried so far?

what material/product this?

How much variation is there in the width of the top and bottom surfaces??

Lots of ways to skin this cat but a little better description of your process would help.
Is the material a continuous flow? Or does it periodically stop and then restart? Is there an encoder installed that is currently tracking the material?
Is the cutter servo a single or dual axis? Is a PLC being used? Or CNC?

Thanks for the replies everyone, here is a little bit more process description:

- The Material flow is continuous 12 to 15 meters/minute

- The product is a nylon strip 12 mm wide never changes, the bottom surface is always 16mm +/- 1mm wide the length from one bottom surface to the next can change from 100 mm to 500mm. Height Difference betweeen top and bottom surface is 6mm +/- 1mm never changes.

- we are currently using a SLC 500 PLC with an encoder to track the flow of material.

- We are using ultra 3000 servo drive for the cutter

Also See attached updated image.

A flying shear would work. The cutter must go straight up and down. The traverse must must match the speed of the material over the dip and make the cut and then return to synchronize at the next place to cut.

Does the distance between cuts change all the time? If it is fixed for a run of 100mm to 500mm it should be easy to use a cam and your servo control. However, if the cut length is continually changing then at very accurate way of detecting where the cut should be made is required. I would NOT use the PLC for this. I would use the I/O on the drive if it has some because it will be more deterministic than PLC I/O.

250mm/sec is not that fast. It should be easy once you have the right equipment and use the right approach.

BTW, the RMC75 can do this easily. The RMC75 doesn't require cam tables to do a flying shear. It can vary the length of the cut on each piece if necessary. This capability is shown in the video below.
http://deltamotion.com/peter/Videos/FlyingShear/SimpleFlyingShear.mp4
The only thing that makes this tricky is the varying cut length and detecting the dips.

That's a normal Cut to length, the difficult part is the shape of material. With a controllogix it would be easy using MAM instruction, I have seen SLC500s with a lot of problems trying to do something similar to this.
Are you stopping to make the cut or you cut on the fly. First one is easy second one requires more logic.