automation of shrink sleeving machine...automation of shrink sleeving machine ... shrink sleeve...

Automation of Shrink Sleeving Machine Using Allen-Bradley® Micro850® Programmable Controllers

This paper provides an overview of how a Micro850® programmable controller can be used on a shrink sleeving machine to reduce an OEM’s engineering effort and to help them maximise productivity.

2 | Automation of Shrink Sleeving Machine

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ......................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 4-5

Challenges ....................................................................................................................... 6

Solutions & Benefits ..................................................................................................... 7-13

Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 14

Resources ...................................................................................................................... 15


Executive Summary As a machine builder, you are challenged to differentiate yourself amidst global competition and rapidly evolving technology. Product labeling demands machines that combine high production output, consistent reliability and product quality with low manpower requirements and low maintenance costs. The machines also need to be flexible enough to adapt to different products and different label materials at different production speeds with varying environmental conditions.

Whether measured from a business, commercial or technical perspective, Rockwell Automation can help improve your labeling machine performance with solutions and services to lower the Total Cost to Design, Develop, and Deliver machines and meet your customers’ requirement. At Rockwell Automation, we strive for a holistic approach that focuses on your machine and business performance. What may start out as an “order-by-order” relationship, can eventually develop into a mutually beneficial business relationship. Rockwell Automation will work with you to develop solutions that will help give you a competitive advantage throughout your machine’s life cycle.

Lower your Total Cost to Design, Develop and DeliverSM shrink sleeving machines with Allen-Bradley® Micro850® Programmable Controllers


Introduction As one of the most dynamic and fast changing elements of product packaging, labels are increasingly becoming the primary measure employed by product manufacturers to differentiate their products and to attract consumers. Labels provide consumers with abundant information about the products they are attached to, and also contain tracking and other information. Also, in industries such as food and beverage, product labels are required by law in most countries. Like labels, labeling machines come in a wide variety. They are generally categorized by the requirement of adhesive application.

• Adhesives required: o Pressure Sensitive Labeling Machine o Hot Melt Glue Labeling Machine o Wet Glue Labeling Machine

• No adhesive required: o Shrink labeling/Sleeving machine o Stretch labeling/Sleeving machine

Shrink sleeve labels are sleeves constructed from film material that, rather than using adhesive, shrinks to a product’s surface when heat is applied. Compared to pressure sensitive labels, shrink sleeve labels have the following advantages:

• Conform to irregularly shaped containers and can be adapted to multiple products • Offer a 360 degree surface to print label contents • Provide a tamper evident seal around the lid of the container


Operation principle of a shrink sleeving machine The principles of operation of the shrink labeler begin with unlabeled containers that are transported via an infeed conveyor and then metered by a rotating feed screw. The shrink sleeve labels are supplied from a roll in the form of a continuous web. As the containers enter the labeler, the labels in web form are opened and fashioned into a tube by a mandrel and fed in precise registration with a printed graphic. The labels are then cut in precise registration and applied to a container by the shooter motor. Product is then transported by the use of a conveyor to a steam tunnel where controlled steam heat shrinks the sleeve tightly onto the container in an enclosed steam tunnel. Containers then exit the shrink tunnel through a discharge conveyor. This white paper describes how Micro850® programmable controllers can be applied on a shrink sleeving machine. Sample code, Bill of Materials, wiring diagrams and other information about this solution are available to help OEMs quickly design, develop and deliver shrink sleeving machines. The sample code has been successfully tested on a shrink sleeving machine that could achieve ±1mm cutting accuracy in speed of 400 labels per minute with label length of 150mm. The sample code and other information can be found in Rockwell Automation sample code library: http://www.rockwellautomation.com/go/scMicro800

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/go/scMicro800


Challenges

• As a shrink sleeving machine builder, your primary challenge is to provide solutions for product manufacturers to enable them to consistantly reduce cost they spend on product labeling. That means:

o The machine can be integrated into the production line seamlessly delivering maximum throughput with consistent reliability and product quality.

o The machine is flexible and able to handle thinner or sustainable and eco-friendly label materials without compromising the integraty of the materials.

o The machine needs to be smarter, easy to use and clean; simple to maintain, intuitive to operate with minimum number of line workers, faster in changeover between runs, products and films, faster in diagnostic when fault occurs, inclusive of label inspection and product rejection functions etc..

• Also you need to address the challenges that product manufacturers face from new requirements by regulation bodies, such as in the field of machinery safety, reliability and hygiene, product serialization, and track and trace. With the advancement of new technology, consumers are also demanding access via interactions with the labels. One example is the inclusion of 2D barcode or quick response (QR) codes on the labels which allows consumers to scan with their smart mobile phone.

• There is no doulbt you need to provide the above solutions with the lowest possible price to stay competitive in the market. You need to work out strategies to manage your total machine cost which may include segregate the market into different performance levels and provide corresponding solutions for different levels, subtask all the automation control elements to a particular supplier which provides bundled solution under a single platform.

• What is equally important in the today’s market is that you have to design, develop and deliver your machine in a shortest possible period of time. You may have to employ modular concept in developing machine hardware and software, making use of existing and proven hardware bundles and software codes with minimum modifications, to shorten machine design and development time.


Solutions & Benefits Rockwell Automation has several solutions for shrink sleeving machines. The solution described in this paper is targeted for low end shrink sleeving machines that operate intermittently with machine speed around 400 labels per minute. In this solution, a 24 point Micro850® controller and a PanelView™ Component (PVc) Human Machine Interface (HMI) are used. Two Kinetix® 300 servo drives are employed to drive the web puller and cutter respectively interfacing with the Micro850® controller through Pulse Train Outputs (PTO). Three PowerFlex® 525 Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) are used to drive the conveyor, feed screw, and the shooter respectively. The controller communicates to the PVc, the Kinetix 300® servo drives and the PowerFlex® 525 VFDs through Ethernet.


Advanced Motion Control to Maximize Machine Speed In a shrink sleeving machine, machine speed is limited by the time spent on film pulling and cutting by web puller and cutter respectively. In this solution, film pulling and cutting are realized through the Micro850® controller sending Pulse Train Outputs (PTO) to the two Kinetix®300 servo drivers of web puller and cutter. Micro850® controller supports powerful and intuitive PLC open based Motion Control Function Blocks (MCFBs), thanks to this you have three ways to shorten film pulling and cutting time to improve machine speed:

• Optimize travel profiles of the web puller and the cutter to make the film pulling and cutting smooth and fast.

• Use interrupt function to start the web puller once a product is detected by the product sensor.

• Optimize the cutter starting time relative to film pulling motion, considering the cutter needs to travel over a gap before it reaches the label film.


Special Registration Function to Deal with Thinner Film With thinner label film material used, a sleeving machine may need to address film length change and slippage. Micro850® controller has a powerful registration function called “Touch Probe” that can effectively deal with film length change and slippage problem. The Touch Probe function is able to capture accurate registration position at high speeds with built-in hardware. What makes the function even more attractive is that programmer does not need to handle interrupt program, he only needs to use this function inside the main program. In comparison to capturing registration in servo drives, Touch Probe provides flexibility in post registration distance adjustment, tighter and direct control, better diagnostics and monitoring.


Modular Software Design to Ease Machine Operation and Diagnosis This solution was developed with the Connected Components Acceleration Toolkit (CCAT), which includes automation engineering design tools helping OEMs reduce machine design overhead. CCAT contains application focused building blocks providing pre-written programs, wiring diagrams, bill of materials, panel layout, HMI screens and quick start guide etc. It also allows OEMs to create their own customized projects using the step-by-step guidance with above mentioned materials automatically generated and populated with user defined names in the materials. Modular software design in this solution has been inherited from CCAT, thus it is extremely beneficial for easy machine operation and fast diagnosis. The solution sample code programs are organized into three logic types: machine control module, application module and device module. The machine control module monitors the states of the application modules and based on a state machine (or other user provided logic) broadcasts out commands to the application modules. The application modules act on the commands from the machine control module with the device modules under their control and provide status back to the machine control module. This program structure and the state machine provide a better way for operator to understand the machine control. The device module structure and the Ethernet communication between the controller and the PowerFlex® and Kinetix® drives make the fault diagnosis fast and convenient.


Powerful Communication Capabilities to Support Advanced Machine Features Advanced machine features like product serialization, trace and track, 2D barcode printing etc. need the controller to be able to interface with newly integrated modules and also to communicate conveniently to the data collection server. Micro850® controller supports the following communication capabilities:

• Embedded USB programming port, serial port (RS232/485) and 10/100 Base-T Ethernet. • Modbus RTU and CIP serial protocol support on both the embedded serial port (non-

isolated) and the serial port plug-in (isolated). • EtherNet/IP protocol with CIP Symbolic support for simplified PanelView™ Component HMI

connectivity. Same symbolic tag name can be used in HMI and controller. • Modbus TCP protocol for connectivity to other HMIs and RTU applications such as data

collection from a supervisory controller.


Automation Control Components Bundle to Minimize Machine Cost Specially targeted for low end shrink sleeving machines, this solution comes with as a “Connected Components” bundle, which includes Micro800® family of controllers, PanelView™ Component graphic terminals, PowerFlex® AC drives, Kinetix® servo drives and other Allen-Bradley® devices. All these components share common programming and configuration called the “Connected Components Workbench™” software. It supports programming in ladder diagram, function block diagram and structured text. Any combination of programming languages can be used in the same project so the programmer can pick whatever language best fits the task at hand. With the Connected Components bundle and the common Connected Components Workbench™ software platform, this solution enables OEMs to minimize their machine cost, while still keeping the flexibility to third party components due to the modular structure and the strong communication capabilities of the controller. Micro850® controllers support plug-in and expansion modules that allow you to optimize your machine cost by choosing performance and functionality specific to your machine needs. These include digital I/O, analog I/O, backup memory, isolated serial port, SMS, weight scale, High Speed Counter, DeviceNet module, etc..


Proven Sample Codes and Other Resources to Shorten Machine Development Time As mentioned above, the sample code provided in this solution has been tested successfully on a real machine. You can make use of the code and other resources including Bill of Materials, wiring diagrams, etc., quickly design your machine with some modifications. You can also make use of the CCAT to create your own customized project through step-by-step guidance according to your preference.


Summary The Micro850® programmable controller solution for shrink sleeving machines is packed with performance at an exceptional value. Allen-Bradley® Connected Components Workbench™ software enables OEMs to develop modular and scalable solutions. OEMs can design, develop and deliver machines faster by leveraging the pre-written sample code, wiring diagrams, bill of materials,

and more. With Micro850® shrink sleeving machine solution, OEMs could achieve better performance and lower their machine cost. How can the Micro850® solution helps to optimize your machine performance?

Global Solutions – Locally Delivered Whether you’re around the corner or around the world, our Services & Support network can provide the skills and resources you need to optimize performance and utilization of your automation equipment, helping you meet your business objectives.

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Resources Call a Rockwell Automation sales office or an authorized distributor today or visit us online at: www.rockwellautomation/solutions/oem

For more information on the Micro800® controller, please visit: http://ab.rockwellautomation.com/Programmable-Controllers/Micro800

Publication OEM-WP021A-EN-P Copyright ©2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in XXX.

Allen-Bradley, Connected Components Workbench, Kinetix, PanelView, PowerFlex, and Total Cost to Design, Develop and Deliver are trademarks of Rockwell Automation, Inc.

EtherNet/IP is a trademark of the ODVA.

http://www.rockwellautomation/solutions/oem

automation of shrink sleeving machine...automation of shrink sleeving machine ... shrink sleeve...

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