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A line that's loaded with smarts

Latrobe Brewing Co.’s new line for 12-oz glass bottles of Rolling Rock beer is a textbook illustration of SCADA in action. Analysis of data is equally impressive.

A drawing of the line gives some idea of how many individual pieces of equipment must communicate with each other along the comm
A drawing of the line gives some idea of how many individual pieces of equipment must communicate with each other along the comm

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is alive and well at Latrobe Brewing Co. of Latrobe, PA. The brewer’s recently installed 12-oz glass bottling line (see Packaging World, Oct. ‘01, pp. 38 and 44 or packworld.com/go/latrobe) deploys approximately 40 pieces of packaging equipment to crank out 1길 bottles/min. All 40 machines are networked in a way that delivers two key benefits: maximum automation through machine-to-machine communication and real-time data acquisition and analysis. The sophisticated network was designed and implemented by line integrator Sig-Simonazzi (Plano, TX).

Like many packaging machines built today, each major machine on the line has its own programmable logic controller (PLC) that “listens” to sensors and “talks to” actuators to accomplish its assigned tasks. In machines where the number of inputs and outputs is modest, point-to-point wiring is used, which means each sensor and each actuator is wired separately to the PLC. But more complex machines such as the filler have so many I/O points that point-to-point wiring would be expensive and cumbersome. So each of these machines has its own I/O bus (sometimes referred to as a fieldbus or device-level network) to carry inputs and outputs to and from its PLC along a single wire. Latrobe uses DeviceNet or AS-I wherever an I/O bus is needed on a machine.

All 40 or so PLCs on the line are networked along an Allen-Bradley Data Highway Plus® communications network from Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, WI). Actually, it’s four separate Data Highway Plus networks due to the sheer number of PLCs involved and the speed with which some signals must travel. Approximately 10 PLCs are assigned to each Data Highway Plus network. To integrate the four networks, Latrobe relies on the network capabilities of Allen-Bradley’s recently developed ControlLogix platform. Through the ControlLogix Gateway, it’s possible to route communications from any one of the four Data Highway Plus networks to any one of the other three. Through the Gateway, the four networks become one.

Packaging manager Bill Allison is pleased with the results.

Good communications

“The level of communication among PLCs along the network is what makes this line so different for us,” says Allison. “It’s no longer a matter of each machine simply handing off the containers to the next machine. Now, with all the PLCs on the Data Highway, the case packer, for example, knows what’s happening at the case erector upstream. This adds greatly to conveyor control. We can modulate conveyor speeds between machines more effectively because the machines share among each other important information about their status.”

Also part of the package are two human-machine interface (HMI) panels, each one an Allen-Bradley Panel View. One is at the filler and the other near case packing. Running in these stations is HMI software that allows operators and mechanics to check on the status of any machine on the line.

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