Hi all,
A customers rotary knife servo system is giving random cut length errors. Unfortuanetly i havent had the machine to look at what is wrong. All i know is its an old parker compumotor setup with a analoge servo drive, motion controller and a human interface unit.
We are pulling the machine down next monday to check all the mechanicals and that is when i will get to jot down the part numbers and the actual make up of the system.
It did have me thinking though, for such a simple system, can a plc be used instead? At least that way it is easy to configure. Just work out the accel rate etc. and model that with a simple 0-10V output to the existing servo drive.
The system is basically a conveyor with measuring encoder. A cut length is input into the parker compumotor interface unit, then at length the knife does one revolution. The web material is a sticky (easily torn by hand) sound deading type material 300mm wide with a thickness of around 6mm and the line speed is a mear 20m/min with cut lengths from 100mm to 500mm.
I apologies for the lack of information about the actual components of this (probably) 20 year old system, but with the info i have given would you use a plc to provide the velocity command for a simple system similar to this?
I do not have much motion experience, i am a maybe more than half a brain sparkie.
A customers rotary knife servo system is giving random cut length errors. Unfortuanetly i havent had the machine to look at what is wrong. All i know is its an old parker compumotor setup with a analoge servo drive, motion controller and a human interface unit.
We are pulling the machine down next monday to check all the mechanicals and that is when i will get to jot down the part numbers and the actual make up of the system.
It did have me thinking though, for such a simple system, can a plc be used instead? At least that way it is easy to configure. Just work out the accel rate etc. and model that with a simple 0-10V output to the existing servo drive.
The system is basically a conveyor with measuring encoder. A cut length is input into the parker compumotor interface unit, then at length the knife does one revolution. The web material is a sticky (easily torn by hand) sound deading type material 300mm wide with a thickness of around 6mm and the line speed is a mear 20m/min with cut lengths from 100mm to 500mm.
I apologies for the lack of information about the actual components of this (probably) 20 year old system, but with the info i have given would you use a plc to provide the velocity command for a simple system similar to this?
I do not have much motion experience, i am a maybe more than half a brain sparkie.