End of line packaging machinery specialist Wächter Packautomatik’s Tablomat tray erector folds and glues cardboard into cartons for transport and display. Blanks are removed from a feeder, separated and transported by conveyor to stations for folding, slot punching, glue application and out feed.
With the machine, however, the interfaces between products from different automation suppliers were causing problems. To overcome this, Lenze has supplied the company with a complete set of drive and automation products – from efficient bevel gears through servo motors, drives, I/O, control and visualisation.
The heart of the system is the 9400 Highline servo drive used for tray withdrawal, inserting and applying a time stamp to control the other machine processes. With this drive-based approach, programming becomes easier with an electric cam group and a master axis. The other axes are simply synchronised to the master as slaves. Communication between the drives takes place via CANbus; and a further CANbus acts as a logic bus to which a Lenze HMI is attached for visualisation, and I/O from the Lenze System 1000. Of additional benefit, the master drive takes on safety functions. Wächter can also introduce safety functions which were formerly unavailable, such as safe maximum speed and safe limited speed.
