0500e Koch2 PDF
0500e Koch2 PDF
0500e Koch2 PDF
At the machine manufacturer Koch in Leopoldshhe the PLCs have retired, since the company are fitting PC-based controller equipment to the whole of their range of woodworking machines.
Classical PLC Technology Could no Longer Guarantee Success The two engineers involved in developing the automation solution for this application, Werner Reinhard and Matthias Kster from Beckhoff, oriented themselves right from the start towards the machining processes on the plant. In the first part of the machine, the cladded wood is cut to length. The saws, angled at 45, cut two V-grooves precisely down as far as the lower foil. When this is then folded at right-angles, a drawer is created, from which only the front panel is missing. For this purpose, the second part of the machine performs all the drilling and gluing processes, together with insertion of the dowels with which the front will be fastened. The installation consists of eight processing stations. Individually, these are: top and side drilling stations, turning station, further drilling stations, cold gluing station, station for insertion of the wooden dowels. A chain conveyor transports the workpieces through the stations. The wooden parts are held pneumatically for the various processing steps. The transport motor is controlled by a frequency converter, which guides the wooden parts dynamically to the clamping equipment. That sounds all easy enough says Kochs automation engineer about these process phases, but it gets very complex when 1800 drawers have to be processed each hour. Some figures give a picture of the dynamic processes
The Machine
The woodworking equipment incorporates a trimming and mitre sawing machine for cutting to length, sawing of V-grooves, drilling, glue injection and dowel insertion. Its range of applications includes the full fabrication of folded drawers and folded plinth components. The workpieces may be between 800 mm and 2500 mm long. Also included in the specification are magazine feeding or transfer from a prior machine, and transport of the workpieces through the processing stations by means of a cam chain. Added to this are the sawing station, the horizontal drilling station, the glue application and dowel insertion stations, and, as a special feature, the Koch KLC glue valves with the sealed, air-tight glue system. The main advantage is the almost complete freedom from maintenance. Other features include the digital adjustment of glue quantity and the high pressure glue pump for any viscosity. Additionally, a vertical drilling station, longitudinal drilling unit, the patented ELC glue monitoring system and a separate gluing and dowel station can be selected as options.
All the process signals are brought to the 20 distributed bus stations in the 15 x 4 metre woodworking machine. They pass from the electronic Bus Terminals via three Lightbus rings for further processing in the PC.
in the machine. Up to 30 drawers can be made each minute using simple drilling procedures. This involves control of 44 axes. The units are 700 mm apart, so that there are always between eight and ten units in the machine. The industrial PC and the TwinCAT automation software are the central pillars of our solution nowadays said Werner Reinhard of the approach. The details begin with a 400 MHz Pentium PC with a separate keyboard and screen. Three optical fibre rings for the Beckhoff Lightbus distribute the computing power quickly and safely to the sawing and drilling process stations. Strict real-time response from the PC is achieved through TwinCAT running under the Windows NT operating system, without the need for additional hardware. The software functionality includes the PLC, which is programmable in accordance with IEC 61131-3 and has 10 ms cycle time (adjustable from 50 s), a wide range of axis and position controllers, diagnostic facilities using the standard methods of the PC world, and data connections with Microsoft standards. The user interface at Koch was created using Visual Basic via the TwinCAT ADS Windows interface for the purposes of visualisation. Optimal control of 44 axes In the Koch application, TwinCAT and its NC functionality commands 44 axes, divided into ten servo-axes and 34 high/ low speed axes. The fast/slow axes take care of the positioning of the workpieces through easy-running linear guides, the
servo-axes perform the processing steps. Installation components include threephase motors and frequency converters for the variable speeds as well as economically controllable DC motors. All the process signals are brought to 20 distributed bus stations in the 15 x 4 metre woodworking machine that has been described. Here the Beckhoff Bus Terminals, familiar as electronic terminal blocks, transfer the machine data onwards. With these components, said Beckhoff project engineer Kster, our customer can use any mixture of signal types at each station. The fine granularity, two channels per signal type, allows for the optimum combination of the necessary I/O channels. The advantage: it saves space, since there are no unused channels, which in any case increase the costs. The bus couplers, which are the coupling stations between Bus Terminal and fieldbus, give the system flexibility and open it to all common fieldbus systems such as Profibus, CANopen, DeviceNet, Interbus, ControlNet, Modbus, Ethernet TCP/IP, USB, RS232, RS485 or the Beckhoff Lightbus. Altogether the Koch technicians used about 180 Bus Terminals, the great majority of which were digital input/ output terminals. The servo-axes, servoactuators and the frequency converters, which are responsible for the drives of the drill spindles, are controlled through analogue Bus Terminals. Dynamic Adaptation Saves Production Time The Koch automation engineer is parti-
cularly proud of the possibility of controlling the NC advance of the servo-axes using TwinCAT. This creates a multilevel depth profile. In other words, the software functions implement a program in which a number of depths and speeds, deburring and intermediate withdrawal are saved as a data set for a drilled hole. This controller option not only saves processing time, but also improves the hole quality through the adjustable speeds. The decision in favour of TwinCAT also brought competitive advantages to the users: the machine setter now only needs to transfer the dimensional data from the customers drawing through the PC to the individual axes in the machine. Customer-specific data is also entered here, such as, for example, manual operation of the 44 axes, machine data input, the entry of message texts, log-book functions for fault analysis, and user management. Everything possible is done in advance in order to leave only the entry of the drawer dimensions to the user. In practice this automatic mechanism has meant fault-free commencement of drawer production - manufacturing tolerances of less than 0.1 mm are achieved without secondary adjustment. Both Koch and Beckhoff are equally happy to have implemented such an advanced automation design on the woodworking machine within only two months not least because the software resource, TwinCAT, allowed progress to be made in several areas. There were the Windows interface, the input routi-
Thanks to the approach of using PC controllers on the Koch woodworking machines, the machine setter only needs to enter the dimensions from the customers drawing via the PC to the individual axes in the machine. Customer-specific data is also entered here, such as, for example, manual operation of the 44 axes, machine data input, the entry of message texts, log-book functions for fault analysis, and user management.
nes and the error messages with graphics that all made the project design so much easier, explained Reinhard. In the early days, all the drill holes were adjusted manually This comment becomes all the more understandable when we picture how the procedures used to be carried out. To begin with, all the holes were set up manually. PLCs and positional controllers then made things easier, Werner Reinhard remembers, but as the number of machines being made went up, these proprietary solutions for just one machine type became simply too expensive. It was only through a detour to DOS computers fitted with supplementary external hardware and expensive axis cards that the Koch automation engineers came into contact with the advanced Beckhoff New Automation Technology. Nowadays, the PLCs at Leopoldshhe have retired, and Koch are fitting PC-based controller equipment to the whole of their machine range, regardless of whether it will cost DM 80,000 or DM 800,000.