Automation of a Stamping Press Machine Using Allen-Bradley® Micro850® Programmable Controllers
This paper provides an overview of how a Micro850 programmable controller can be used on a stamping press machine to reduce an OEM’s engineering effort and to help them maximise productivity.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ......................................................................................................... 3
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 4-5
Challenges ....................................................................................................................... 5
Solutions and Benefits ................................................................................................. 6-10
Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 11
Resources ...................................................................................................................... 12
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Executive Summary As a press machine builder, you are challenged to differentiate yourself amidst global competition and rapidly evolving technology. Press line production demands press machines that combine improved machine safety, high production output, consistent reliability, and product quality with low manpower requirements and low maintenance costs. The machines also need to be flexible enough to adapt to different products, be faster in changeover, and consume less energy.
Whether measured from a business, commercial or technical perspective, Rockwell Automation can help improve your press machine safety and performance with solutions and services to lower the Total Cost to Design, Develop, and Deliver® machines that meet your customers’ requirement. At Rockwell Automation, we strive for a holistic approach that focuses on your machine and business performance. What may start out as an “order-by-order” relationship, can eventually develop into a mutually beneficial business relationship. Rockwell Automation works with you to develop solutions that will help give you a competitive advantage throughout your machine’s life cycle.
Lower your Total
Cost to Design, Develop, and
Deliver press machines with
Allen-Bradley Micro850
Programmable Controllers
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Introduction
This paper describes an automation control solution for a low end mechanical press machine using Allen-Bradley® Micro850® programmable controllers. The solution has been successfully implemented on a customer machine.
A stamping press is a metal working machine tool used to shape or cut metal by deforming it with a die. Some of the key stamping press types are mechanically-driven presses, hydraulically-driven presses, and servo-driven presses. Stamping presses are typically used with auxiliary equipment such as coil stations, straighteners, transfer systems, stackers/de-stackers, and slug/chip conveyors. Typically, presses are electronically linked with a controller to an automatic feeder, which feeds metal through the die. The raw material is fed into the automatic feeder after it has been unrolled from a coil and put through a straightener. Mechanically driven presses are powered by a motor that runs the machine's large flywheel. The press's flywheel works by storing kinetic energy, which is then transferred through the gearing into the press slide. Mechanical presses consist of:
Motor
Fly wheel
Clutch/brake system
Helical gears
Connecting rods
Slide (ram)
Bolster plate
Counterbalance system
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To help OEMs quickly design, develop, and deliver press machines with Micro850 controllers and other Allen-Bradley products, the following information is available for download as shown below:
Sample codes for controller and Human Machine Interface,
Bills of Material,
Wiring diagrams etc.,
http://www.rockwellautomation.com/go/scMicro850
Challenges
One of the trends in the stamping press machine global market is an increasingly growing number of machines delivered from emerging countries to developed countries compared to those locally built in the developed countries. Machine safety standard compliance has become one of the key challenges faced by press machine OEMs from emerging countries because of the stricter safety requirements in developed countries.
As a press machine builder, you have to provide solutions for product manufacturers to meet their increasingly demanding press line requirements and to consistently reduce operation cost. That means:
o The solution must be able to provide safe, efficient stamping, and reliable press automation. The machine needs to be compliant to accepted standards to integrate into the production line seamlessly delivering maximum throughput with consistent reliability and product quality.
o The machine must be flexible, able to handle different product materials with consistent repeatability, and what is more, it must be able to changeover quickly to reduce machine downtime. This is very critical as press line production runs today are becoming smaller and faster.
o The machine needs to be smarter, easy to use, and clean; simple to maintain, intuitive to operate with a minimum number of line workers, faster in changeover between runs, products, and materials, faster in diagnostic when fault occurs, consume less energy and minimize material scrap.
There is no doubt that you need to provide the above solutions with the lower price to stay competitive in the market. You need to devise strategies to manage your total machine cost, which may include segregation of the market into different performance levels with corresponding solutions for different levels. Subtasking all the automation control elements to a particular supplier that provides bundled solution under a single platform can help.
What is equally important in today’s market is that you have to design, develop, and deliver your machine in a shortest possible time. You may have to employ a modular concept in developing machine hardware and software, making use of existing and proven hardware bundles and software codes with minimum modifications, to shorten machine design and development time.
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Solutions & Benefits Rockwell Automation offers press control systems, bundled packages, and kits meeting safety-related control standards for clutch/brake mechanical stamping presses. These off-the-shelf solutions include PressGuard™ pre-engineered press control systems; ClutchGuard™ solution for clutch brake control; FeederPro™ packages for press feed or cut-to-length applications and STFPro™ for servo transfer press feed systems. The solution that is presented here is based on the Micro800® series controller platform, suitable for low end press machines. Press machine OEMs could make use of the provided resources to custom design their own machines.
Item Controller Human Machine Interface
Safety Relay Variable Frequency Drive (VFD)
Model 48 Points Micro850
PanelView™ 800 400C-CR30 PowerFlex® 753
Quantity 2 1 1 1
Communication with Controller
Ethernet Ethernet Symbolic CIP
Serial Modbus Ethernet
Driving Mechanisms
- - - Flywheel
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Usage of Software Configurable Safety Relay for Compliance to Safety Standards In this solution, the Guardmaster® 400C-CR30 Software Configurable Safety Relay is used as the safety controller to manage safety functions. The Guardmaster 440C-CR30 Software Configurable Safety Relay is flexible, cost-effective, and easy to use. This relay is ideal for applications requiring as many as ten dual-channel safety circuits and controlling as many as five output zones. You can configure this relay by selecting certified safety function blocks to rapidly build your applications. This relay is completely integrated with Allen-Bradley Logix controllers and can be configured using Studio 5000 Logix Designer® software or Connected Components Workbench™ software. The Guardmaster 440C-CR30 relay can share information with the control system through the embedded serial port and the optional EtherNet/IP™ plug-in. It is suitable for applications up to PLe, Cat. 4 per ISO 13849-1 and SIL CL3 per IEC 62061. A press machine is one of the applications requiring the highest functional safety level in the machinery segment. The following safety functions are managed by the Guardmaster 400C-CR30 relay in this solution:
- E-Stop, - Gate interlocking, - Die block interlocking - Two hand control, - Muting light curtain, etc.
The integrity of the safety functions is improved since the safety function blocks limit changes by design,
Dual Controller and Dual Encoder Structure for Safe and Efficient Stamping
In this solution two Micro850 controllers are used to control the machine, which is one way to achieve control reliability as specified by ANSI B11.1-2009 Safety Requirements for Mechanical Power Presses. Two encoders are utilized on the machine to detect the press position, the two encoders are wired to the high speed inputs of the two controllers respectively. The machine mode selection switch, main
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motor operation mode switch, air pressure sensors, slide overrun sensor, press overload sensor, die protection misfeed sensors and so forth, are also wired to the two controllers respectively. Critical information to allow safe motion is wired as outputs of one controller to the inputs of the other controller and vice versa. These connections are used to communicate between the two controllers in a voting method that occurs continuously while the processors are in RUN mode (during runtime). Operation of the press is only possible when the voting of the two controllers matches exactly on this critical information. This is one of multiple methods that are used in the design to insure only safe motion can occur.
When the machine is powered up, the two controllers will conduct cross-check including controller check and wiring check before proceeding to next steps. In runtime, the two controllers are cross checked dynamically through created heartbeat to make sure the controllers work properly. Programmable Limit Switches (or programmable CAM outputs) and tonnage monitoring sensors are wired to individual controllers to fully utilize controller I/O resources.
Strong Communication Capabilities and Cutting Edge Design for Enhanced Diagnostic Efficiency and Greater Energy Saving In this solution, all major components are connected either through Ethernet or through serial ports, these connections makes machine fault detection and annunciation easy and effective.
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On a Micro850 controller, and embedded Ethernet port, non-isolated serial port and USB port, there are isolated serial port plug-in, DeviceNet™ plug-in, Ethernet plug-in available for further connectivity requirements. The Ethernet plug-in is also applicable to the 400C-CR30 relay to enhance its connectivity on top of embedded serial port and USB port. Serial port, USB port, and Ethernet port are available on a PanelView 800 Human Machine Interface. The PowerFlex 753 AC drive supports the following optional communication modules: EtherNet/IP, Dual-port EtherNet/IP, ControlNet, DeviceNet, and various other industrial networks. PowerFlex 753 AC Drives are cost-effective and easy to use in general purpose applications requiring safety features. Safe Torque-Off option and Safe Speed Monitor option are certified at PLe/SIL3 are supported on the drives. The drives can be configured to adapt to actual load conditions automatically to achieve further energy saving.
Solution Bundle and Scalable Controller for Lowered Machine Cost This solution comes with as a “Connected Components” bundle, which includes Micro800® family of controllers, PanelView 800 graphic terminal, PowerFlex AC drives, 400C-CR30 Software Configurable Safety Relay and other Allen-Bradley devices. All these components share common programming and configuration called the Connected Components Workbench software. It supports programming in ladder diagram, function block diagram, and structured text. Any combination of programming languages can be used in the same project so the programmer can pick whatever language best fits the task at hand.
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With the Connected Components bundle and the common Connected Components Workbench software platform, this solution helps OEMs to minimize their machine cost, while still keeping the flexibility to third-party components due to the modular structure and the strong communication capabilities of the controller. Micro850 controllers support plug-in and expansion modules that allow you to optimize your machine cost by choosing performance and functionality specific to your machine needs. These include digital I/O, analog I/O, backup memory, and isolated serial port, SMS, weight scale, High Speed Counter, DeviceNet module and so forth.
Proven Sample Codes and Other Resources for Shorter Machine Development Time As mentioned above, the sample code that is provided in this solution has been tested successfully on a real machine. You can make use of the code and other resources including Bill of Materials, wiring diagrams and quickly design your machine with some modifications
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Summary
The Micro850 programmable controller solution for press
machines is packed with performance at an exceptional
value. Allen-Bradley Connected Components Workbench
software helps OEMs to develop modular and scalable
solutions. OEMs can design, develop, and deliver machines
faster by leveraging the pre-written sample code, wiring
diagrams, bill of materials, and more.
With Micro850 press machine solution, OEMs can help improve machine safety and productivity while lower machine cost.
Global Solutions – Locally Delivered Whether you’re around the corner or around the world, our Services and Support network can provide the skills and resources you need to optimize performance and utilization of your automation equipment, helping you meet your business objectives.
Global emergency support 24/7
Offices and agents in more than 80
countries
35,000 distributors and agents
1000 service engineers, consultants, and project managers worldwide
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Resources
Call a Rockwell Automation sales office or an authorized distributor today or visit us online at: www.rockwellautomation/solutions/oem
For more information on the Micro800 controller, please visit: http://ab.rockwellautomation.com/Programmable-Controllers/Micro800
Publication OEM-WP007A-EN-P Copyright ©2016 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in 2016.
Allen-Bradley, ClutchGuard, Connected Components Workbench, FeederPro, GuardMaster, LISTEN. THINK. SOLVE., Micro800, Micro850, PressGuard, PanelView, PowerFlex, Rockwell Automation, Rockwell Software, STFPro, Studio 5000 Logix Designer, and Total Cost to Design, Develop and Deliver
are trademarks of Rockwell Automation, Inc.
DeviceNet and EtherNet/IP are trademark of the ODVA.
