It must be ready to accept freshly filled and lidded cups at a rate of 400/min. So how did A+F engineers manage the demanding programming task required to come up with the control parameters needed to synchronize all the activities that go on in this complex sleeving/tray-packing machine? By going to the library. But the “library” in this case is a collection of function blocks in Siemens’ (www.siemens.com) Simotion Top Loading Software library, which is capable of controlling a wide range of kinematics in robotic handling applications.
According to A+F electrical engineer Dirk Panhorst, the Simotion Top Loading library is a piece of software programmed by Siemens with an interface for applications engineers like himself. “Without it, we’d have had to do all the software engineering ourselves,” says Panhorst. “I suppose it would have taken us more than a year with one or two engineers involved to program all the functions in this machine had we not been able to pull them from the library.”
Panhorst and his engineering colleagues at A+F were among the first to use the Simotion modular concepts in a packaging machinery application. According to A+F head of electrical design Werner Woermann, the goal now at A+F is to limit in-house software development to 30% for the automation of any machine.
