Background Introduction

Due to the diverse shapes and sizes of product packaging, the demand for packaging machines today is equally varied. While packaging primarily serves to protect its contents, product presentation often boosts purchasing desire, necessitating continuous adjustments to meet point-of-sale requirements. Even with frequently changing packaging tasks, operators expect their packaging machines to be reliable, offer high cycle speeds, and, most importantly, be flexible. Today's machines are highly automated, thus requiring intelligent, modular safety solutions that maintain economic viability and provide a competitive edge. To address this, the German company CODESYS has developed a new intelligent control solution.

Oystar Packaging Group

Founded in 1893 and located in Stutensee near Karlsruhe, the Oystar Packaging Group is a world-leading supplier of packaging machines, offering related technologies and a wide range of services. Oystar has placed a high priority on safety for many years. The company supplies everything from standalone machines to complete packaging lines through ten international production sites. These include carton erectors, tray and case packers, integrated packaging machines, high-performance balers, versatile packaging lines, palletizing solutions, and conveyor belt technology. Most packaging systems are used in the primary industries of dairy products, food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.

FP18-1 New Filling System

For the production of daily hair care products, cosmetics company Kao Group utilizes the new FP18-1 filling platform from Oystar Group's IWK company, which can handle various specifications, shapes of tube packaging, and different product formulations.

Using this equipment at Kao (Germany) GmbH, a subsidiary of Kao Group in Germany, 50ml tubes are filled at a capacity of 120 tubes/minute, and 250ml tubes are filled at a capacity of 80 tubes/minute. According to industry insiders, considering the specific nature of the filled products, such speeds are already at their limit. Furthermore, this filling machine can fill 50 different product formulations and adapt to 5 different packaging materials. The FP18-1 is also compatible with various metal and plastic tubes with diameters ranging from 10 to 60mm and lengths from 60 to 250mm.

CODESYS SoftMotion

The core of this filling platform is driven by servo motors. The tube conveying and positioning system can precisely position tubes using servo motors that automatically adjust height. During the filling process, tubes are lifted by servo motors following a motion profile, ensuring a smooth, bubble-free filling operation. Additionally, the filling machine can adjust the dosing accuracy at the metering station through a servo-driven piston stroke setting. CODESYS SoftMotion provides comprehensive motion control solutions, designing professional motion control function blocks based on PLCOpen standards, with independent control divided into three categories: single-axis, master-slave axes, and CNC numerical control systems including multi-axis robots.

CODESYS unifies motion control and logic control, integrating them into the IEC61131-3 standard CODESYS programming system and CODESYS real-time runtime system, forming the CODESYS SoftMotion (CNC) toolkit. From single-axis motion to complex CNC control and robotic applications, everything can be programmed using CODESYS SoftMotion (CNC).

In contrast to traditional motion control solutions, CODESYS SoftMotion (CNC) offers a toolkit directly integrated into the CODESYS programming environment to implement all motion control functionalities. The CODESYS SoftMotion (CNC) toolkit is based on the international standard IEC61131-3 programming language, allowing users to develop the most complex motion control applications.

CODESYS SoftMotion Features:

(1) Motion control programming is independent of the bus and drives.

(2) Can be used with drives for numerous standard motion controllers, such as CiA DSP 402 controllers, stepper motors, inverters, virtual axes, etc.

(3) Bus and drives can be configured directly within the CODESYS programming environment.

(4) Provides a POU library containing all motion control function blocks, enabling fast and efficient development of simple motion programs.

(5) Supports the design of electronic cams in an integrated editor.

(6) Supports an integrated DIN 66025 editor (with G-code support) for planning and editing complex movements.

(7) Develop multi-axis robot controllers using PLCopen Motion Part 4 and the axis group editor.

(8) Rich set of library functions, including geometric data processing (path preprocessing), spline calculation, CNC tool position correction, etc.

(9) Includes extensive exchange libraries (for data backup and exchange) to support the development of industrial robots with different kinematics, such as Delta robots, SCARA robots, portal robots, and gantry robots.

(10) Supports online CAM editor and CNC editor, allowing machine operators to graphically create and edit CNC programs.

Xinmai offers localized ARM+CODESYS customization.