Design and commissioning of Allen-Bradley software and Indramat CLC motion control software for a three axis palletising system. All software was designed to conform to the Ford Motor Company STEPS programming structure.
A six station lift and traverse unit transported full racks of cylinder heads into the system and carried the empty racks to an unload station. Each rack contained one hundred components within ten layers. Once the rack was positioned at the decanting station the gantry would collect the cylinder heads two at a time and then place them onto a power and free conveyor.
Due to the distance that each layer could be displaced, the gantry performed a compensation routine prior to unloading each layer. This routine would give an offset value in all three axes for the component pick up positions , thereby ensuring a clean consistent pick up each time.
All operator controls and system status indication was implemented with an Allen-Bradley PanelView 1400e display.
