by Gary Mintchell | Nov 15, 2024 | Automation, Capital Projects, Motion Control, Technology
Time to first production. This mantra has stayed with me since the time a company I worked for built automated assembly machines. This story tells of how some new engineering tools from Festo and additional assembly services enabled a company called CODI Manufacturing to meet a customer’s immediate need.
CODI Manufacturing introduced today a compact, flexible 12-cycle-per-minute case packer for small to mid-sized food and beverage companies that achieves an industry leading price/performance ratio.
The company utilized the Festo Handling Guide Online (HGO) engineering tool to design the two-axis handling system, the core of the new machine’s package handling. By having Festo assemble and ship a bolt-in-ready handling system, the company was able to build and commission the new machine in just four weeks.
“This machine is incredibly flexible,” said Jared Jones, Chief Operating Officer, CODI Manufacturing. “All the end user has to do is swap out the gripper head to change the number, type, and size of bottles, cans, jars, or pouches being packed into shipping cases, select a new recipe on the HMI, and start the machine.”
The CODI design features:
- Festo’s new multiprotocol CMMT-AS servo drives and matching EMMT-ST one-cable motors
- New CPX-AP-A configurable remote I/O terminal
- New VTUX valve terminal
- A simplified motion series (SMS) low-cost electric-linear actuator
- The CDPX IP67 machine mounted HMI
- Festo robust linear axes
- The Festo CPX-CEC controller with EtherCAT communications for advanced motion control.
Collaboratively, Festo Engineering and CODI developed a pneumatic gripping head that provides feedback on successful gripping of each bottle. “Customers are amazed at the advanced motion automation technology on this machine for the price point,” Jones said. “It’s striking how much state-of-the-art automation is packed into such a small footprint machine.”
CODI Manufacturing had wanted to build a compact case packer for small to mid-sized companies for several years. Recently, CODI was four weeks into an eight-week project when Jones and the customer discussed adding a case packer to the order. “When I mentioned a price, the customer said he’d buy the machine if we could deliver it in four weeks with the rest of his order,” recalled Jones. “I said we’d try.”
The core of the machine would be a two-axis handling system used to grip and lift six bottles off one conveyor and place them into a box on an adjacent conveyor. The CODI team used the Festo HGO engineering tool to specify the system where the axes, servos, motors, mounting plates, and accessories were all properly sized and interoperable. The design session took minutes, saving CODI several days of engineering time.
“One of my lead controls engineers came into my office and said that Festo would supply a bolt-in-ready handling system at basically the same cost as buying and assembling the pieces and parts,” Jones said. “There was simply so little price difference between assembled and unassembled that we went with assembled. We used CAD files from the HGO session to build the frame while we waited for the assembly. Three weeks later, the system arrived. We used eight bolts to attach it to the machine frame. For a multiple-axis system, this was the easiest and fastest assembly and commissioning we’d ever had and the lowest total cost.”
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 21, 2024 | Automation, Technology
As an EV owner, news relating to them interests me. That plus Festo continues to be an intriguing company. I’ve seen other news about battery recycling and mixing raw materials.
Festo created a new solution for high throughput dry-room electrode assembly of EV batteries. In 2022, the Festo electric mobility initiative demonstrated an automated degassing cell. In 2023, the company developed an automated chemical processing solution for recycling the valuable materials incorporated within EV batteries. Now, in 2024, Festo focuses on dry-room electrode production. A new display of the solution simulates the unrolling, cutting, aligning, and layering of anodes and cathodes.
The first high-precision proportional valve terminal on the market – the new Festo VTEP – maintains roll tension, which is critical to the quality of EV batteries, and does so at a significant cost saving compared to electric automation. VTEP is the latest Controlled Pneumatics solution from Festo. Controlled Pneumatics is the next stage in the evolution of pneumatic solutions for the 21st century. Controlled Pneumatics solutions combine high-speed, long-life, and energy-efficient piezo-electric valve cartridges with sensors and control algorithms into a single smart unit.
With the VTEP, users set performance parameters per valve channel and the proportional pressure valves provide closed-loop control to those presets. Valves deliver highly dynamic response and precise pressure control to achieve “target reached” status for each channel, which equates to the motion complete function in electric drive technology. Sustaining the target setting makes the VTEP terminal ideal for maintaining roll tension in automated dry room electrode production.
The solution highlights the performance advantages linked to huge bandwidth – 200-megabyte rate – and exceedingly low cycle time – under 100 milliseconds – of the new Festo Automation Platform (AP) I/O. The AP’s CPX-AP-A remote I/O and CPX-AP-I decentralized I/O communicate at backplane speed. This I/O architecture is compatible with EtherNET/IP, PROFINET, EtherCAT, Modbus, and IO-Link by applying a protocol-specific AP bus module. This is a plus for OEMs supplying multiple control systems on serial machines as the bus module changes, while the I/O stays the same.
The Festo components for dry room applications are copper and zinc free, which adhere to best industry practice. Festo offers copper and zinc free options in dozens of product families, including valve manifolds, actuators, air preparation systems, and accessories. Festo copper and zinc free product variants feature a “F1A” designation in their model numbers.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 10, 2024 | Automation, Technology
Fabtech is in Orlando this year. Next week—October 15-17. Hurricane Milton is making landfall tonight around Tampa Bay. Orlando is on the path.
As of today, October 9, the show is still on. I’m betting that the area will still have much debris, but that buildings will still be standing and the airport will be operating. I hope everyone down there stays safe.
One of my long-time marketing communications friends now represents Güdel. Mechanical parts have mostly remained outside my area aside from some developing conveyor technology. I pass this along for those of you who design machines.
Adding linear motion to articulated robots is now a widely adopted solution to extend flexibility and work envelopes. But these benefits only apply if the robot runs smoothly on a track that in many production environments will be exposed to dust, soot, abrasives and fine contaminants, which can cause the track’s roller bearings to stop rotating, leading to malfunction and robot downtime.
At FABTECH booth W5029, Güdel will showcase its ‘cam follower advantage.’ A cam follower is Güdel’s cylindrical roller bearing mounted on a stud that rides on the guide rail, providing significantly increased resilience to harsh industrial environments compared with traditional profile guides commonly used in 7th axis tracks.
Güdel tracks feature a wiper/scraper combination on the block that scrapes the rail clean of debris including paint and weld spatter. The roller’s bearings are completely enclosed to keep out contamination while their larger size also enables the track to better roll over left-over debris.
Easier Servicing
When servicing Güdel’s cam followers, all the user needs to do is slide out the cartridge containing the bearings on the side of the rail. It takes just 10 minutes to remove, replace and adjust the cam follower compared to profile guides, that likely require an entire production shift while the robot is sitting idle.
Güdel also announces the transition to a no-weld anchoring solution for thin concrete conditions on select equipment. This innovative approach enables customers to install equipment in more end-user plants without the cost or permitting typically required for on-site welding.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 1, 2024 | Process Control, Standards, Technology
I have two pieces of news regarding The Open Process Automation Forum. These came just as I was wondering if the organization had been making any more progress. I have unfortunately seen enough of these open automation standards attempts to wonder if this one will go much farther—especially given the maturity of the market.
This group started as a response to the high cost of upgrading automation systems in the field in the process industries. Where I see more opportunities would be in the discrete manufacturing area where the old trend of larger and more complex systems seem to be reversing to a more manageable size for the automation with the requirement to tie the systems to information networks.
My second piece, following this one, reports on an analysis of OPAF’s proposed system orchestration standard.
Philosophy aside, OPAF has made another step forward by launching the O-PAS Certification Program.
The Open Group Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) has developed the O-PAS Standard, a standard of The Open Group, which uses existing and emerging standards whenever possible, making it a standard of standards. The standard enables the development of fit-for-purpose systems consisting of cohesive functional elements acquired from independent suppliers and integrated easily, via a modular architecture characterized by open standard interfaces between elements.
O-PAS certified products allow end users to build open, interoperable, and secure systems with products from multiple suppliers, offering greater flexibility in obsolescence management, system upgrades, and technology infusion.
Jacco Opmeer, Co-Chair of the Open Process Automation Forum at The Open Group and Principal Automation Engineer at Shell says, “Certification provides the credibility that the fundamental qualities open systems will bring are measurable, and this will support the realization of many of the values the Open Process Automation Forum has been promoting.”
Hideki Murata, head of the Systems Integration Planning Dept. at Yokogawa Electric Corporation, commented, “Yokogawa welcomes the O-PAS Certification Program as this will allow us to officially certify our products designed for the O-PAS Standard. We expect the program will accelerate the development of the O-PAS ecosystem by enabling end users to select certified products with confidence. This will help the industry move forward with open, interoperable, and secure products and systems.”
Within the O-PAS Standard, there are Profiles that define the various segments of the architecture. The O-PAS Certification Program is based on these Profiles and for each Profile, the Supplier must attain independent verification of its claims of conformance. The Connectivity Framework and the Global Discovery Server Profiles are currently ready to be certified against, and The Open Group is anticipating that more Profiles will be available by the end of the year.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 18, 2024 | Automation, Technology
Zebra Technologies has added a range of new deep learning features to its Aurora machine vision software to support machine and line builders as well as manufacturers faced with quality and visual inspection challenges. Zebra’s judicious acquisitions over the years have compounded it into an interesting high-tech company.
Zebra’s Aurora software suite with deep learning tools provides powerful visual inspection solutions for machine and line builders, engineers, programmers and data scientists in the automotive, electronics and semiconductor, food and beverage and packaging industries. The suite features no code deep learning optical character recognition (OCR), drag and drop environments, and extensive libraries that allow users to create solutions to solve complex use cases that traditional rules-based systems struggle to address.
Users of Zebra’s Aurora Design Assistant integrated development environment can create applications by constructing and configuring flowcharts instead of writing traditional program code. The software also enables users to design a web-based human-machine interface (HMI) for the applications.
The software now comes with deep learning object detection and the latest version of the Aurora Imaging Copilot companion application with a dedicated workspace for training a deep learning model on object detection. Separate add-ons are available for training a deep learning model with an NVIDIA GPU card and running a deep learning model to perform inference or prediction on an NVIDIA GPU and Intel integrated GPU, respectively.
Machine and computer vision engineers using Aurora Vision Studio can quickly create, integrate, and monitor powerful machine vision applications. Its advanced and hardware-agnostic software provides an intuitive graphical environment for the creation of sophisticated vision applications without the need to write a single line of code. It has a comprehensive set of over 3,000 proven and ready-to-use filters, enabling machine and computer vision engineers to design customized solutions in a simple, three-step workflow: design the algorithm, create a custom local HMI or on-line Web HMI and deploy it to a PC-based industrial computer.
A deep learning toolchain has been switched to a new training engine with mechanisms for training data balancing which leads to better training results on low quality datasets. Training is now faster and more repeatable, and the deep learning add-on is compatible with Linux systems, for inference only.
Zebra’s Aurora Imaging Library software development kit is for experienced programmers coding vision applications in C++, C# and Python. It includes a broad collection of tools for processing and analyzing 2D images and 3D data using traditional rules-based methods as well as those based on deep learning.
The latest additions expand its capabilities with the introduction of anomaly detection tools using deep learning for defect detection and assembly verification tasks where the aim is to find abnormalities. Unlike other available deep learning tools, the training is unsupervised, only needing normal references.
The deep-learning-based OCR tool uses a pre-trained deep neural network model to read characters, digits, punctuation marks and certain symbols without the need to specify or teach it specific fonts. The deep learning-based OCR tool includes string models and constraints to enable more robust and relevant reading.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 17, 2024 | Automation, Robots, Sensors, Technology
One place where technology and integration and partners advances lies in the vision and robotics area. This news concerns Orbbec 3D vision systems integrating with NVIDIA Isaac Perceptor robotics platforms.
In brief: Gemini 330 cameras with built-in depth processing deliver high-precision Depth+RGB vision for NVIDIA Isaac Perceptor AI-based perception workflow for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in indoor and outdoor environments.
Orbbec, an industry leader dedicated to 3D vision systems, announced its Gemini 330 series Stereo Vision 3D cameras are now integrated with NVIDIA Isaac Perceptor, a reference workflow for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) built on GPU-accelerated Isaac ROS.
These cameras enhance depth quality and provide longer-range sensing in varied lighting conditions, which lets Isaac Perceptor – whose general availability was announced by NVIDIA today at COMPUTEX – output 3D reconstruction and obstacle cost maps of any unstructured environment.
The Gemini 335/335L/336/336L cameras operate in both passive and active laser-illuminated modes to ensure high-quality depth and RGB data output even in challenging lighting conditions. The depth algorithms are processed in the camera by Orbbec’s latest depth engine ASIC and thus eliminates the burden on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin module-based compute for such operations. The cameras include internal IMU and temperature sensors and have a working range of 0.2-10 meters, global shutter image sensors, wide field-of-view lenses, high frame rates, low latency and precise multi-camera synchronization.
Orbbec also announces the Gemini 336/336L variants for improved performance in indoor environments by adding NIR bandpass filters. This reduces the potential of “holes” in a depth map due to glare from shiny floors and other reflective surfaces and “ghost” images from repetitive patterns in the environment.
In addition to AMRs, the Gemini 330 series cameras are well suited for robot arm applications that utilize AI vision for bin-picking, palletization, scanning and sorting applications, especially where reduction in glare and resulting holes from glossy surfaces are important.
