As an Engineering Services company, Program4 Engineering designs specialty machines to improve a particular process flow or solve spot problems in a process line. Our engineers in partnership with machining fabrication shops create solutions that can be thoroughly tested and approved in our shop prior to installation and startup.

Specialty Servo Machine: Mould Turner

 Program4 Engineering provided a turn key Machine Design Servo Solution in designing, building, and installing replacements for two existing mould inverting units for a major confectionery manufacturer. From start to finish, this new equipment was working within a six-week time frame.

The original mould inverting units utilized AC motors, contactors, air clamps, solenoid valves and proximity switches. This complex configuration caused erratic operation requiring constant supervision and maintenance by the operators.

Program4 Engineering greatly simplified the operation by designing a contained mould inverter that utilizes a single servo motor and toothed belt. The servo motor incorporates an internal multi-turn encoder eliminating the need for any external home switches or homing routines. This design now allows the mould turners to operate in a continuous rotary fashion and does not require any external position or over travel switches. 3-D concept drawings were done using Solid Works® for customer approval, with the fabrication details pulled right out.

Following approval of the new design, the new mould inverting units were fabricated and thoroughly tested prior to installation. In two days on-site Program4 Engineering completed installation, testing and training of operations and maintenance personnel.

 

Did You Know That…

… many applications that were once air cylinder actuated are now being specified as servo motors and linear actuators?

Over time air cylinders degrade and can be inaccurate, unreliable and difficult to adjust. Servo motors provide reliable, accurate and repeatable operation. In addition, servo based solutions are flexible and can be reprogrammed for a variety of applications. They are essential in today’s ever changing manufacturing environment to quickly adapt new products or processes to existing machinery.

Specialty Servo Machine: High Speed Row Aligner

Program4 did some problem solving for the baking industry by designing a light weight, high speed, low inertia soft paddle wheel to align fragile product traveling from a series of transfer conveyors back into a straight line in approach to final product wrapping. Controls for this high speed delicate indexing are Allen-Bradley’s® Ultra™3000 servo family and the ControlLogix® platform.

As product was transferred around corners and from conveyor to conveyor, the rows of product became misaligned making it difficult to feed into wrapping machines. For this solution a single servo axis is used to position a rotary alignment wheel which straightens rows of product for the packaging equipment. The ControlLogix PLC monitors sensors on the line to detect product and move the alignment wheel into position. The machine is currently running in excess of 115 rows per minute aligning fragile baked goods.

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