Software drives panel control and monitoring

CIMPLICITY PE provides a clear view of a laminated panel manufacturing line, as described here by Chris Milburn, PLC Sales Manager, GE Fanuc Automation (UK).

CIMPLICITY PE provides a clear view of a laminated panel manufacturing line, as described here by Chris Milburn, PLC Sales Manager, GE Fanuc Automation (UK).

Founded as a plumbing enterprise in 1954, the Austrian company Pflaum and Soehne now manufactures laminated panels.

Some panels have a polyurethane (PU) foam insulating core, others are fireproof panels with a rock wool core and others are pre colour-coated.

In addition to providing excellent thermal insulation or fire protection (up to class F180), the panel systems offer quick and cost-efficient installation.

Pflaum panels are typically used in the construction of furniture retail units, in the workshop construction industry and in public buildings.

With the new panel manufacturing line put into service earlier this year, production output has been multiplied five times.

The new 80m long manufacturing line now runs continually, with no interruption of production required for feeding new sheet rolls or for cutting and stacking.

In addition, the new control system allows two different jobs to be handled simultaneously, requiring a control and visualisation system that met extremely high requirements.

The control technology and monitoring system was contracted out to system integrator PLC Electric Austria who used GE Fanuc CIMPLICITY 5.0 Plant Edition (PE) software to implement the visualisation system.

Maximilian Mittendorfer, PLC Electric Managing Director, explained: "Our main objective when developing the visualisation system was to ensure ease of use and a clear view of the functions of all the individual components.

To do so, we focused strictly on the functional aspects of the system." The visualisation system is only used to monitor the panel manufacturing processes, while control is carried out directly by the PPS system and the PLCs.

The PPS system was developed by Pflaum in Visual Basic.

New jobs are passed to the system via a parts list and the manufacturing line is then configured automatically.

Manual intervention, of course, is also possible.

CIMPLICITY PE provides a clear overview of the complex system.

Separate detailed screens show each production area.

These views display all the important system states practically in real time, meaning that any station motion can be monitored directly.

The CIMPLICITY detail screens of production areas also display all elements which are normally invisible to the system operators at the machine.

For instance, the motion of the stopping needles for the rock wool transportation, and the operating states of all the light barriers and limit switches during production, are displayed.

At the apron feeder, pressure gauges are used to check the bonding pressure.

Logging is carried out at different intervals for different values, i.e either each second, every 10 seconds or longer.

As CIMPLICITY offers excellent trending functions, the stored data can be rapidly analysed to optimise the plant.

The application includes two run-time servers with around 35,000 I/Os used for the entire plant communication.

CIMPLICITY is an excellent tool for the implementation of such complex monitoring and visualisation tasks.

CIMPLICITY also manages the entire alarm system handling with detailed error messages.

Three alarm classes were defined: critical alarms, major alarms and minor alarms.

In case of a critical or major alarm condition, the plant is automatically stopped and the alarm is displayed on the operator panel.

To increase ease of use and clarity, the touch screens have only a very limited number of function/visualisation keys.

All operating states are periodically stored and are thus available for later statistical analysis.

They are also used to continually optimise the plant and to monitor the manufacturing process (as required in law).

With the Linked Objects function, a component only needs to be defined once and it is then simply referred to in all other representations.

Whenever the component is changed, all linked views are automatically updated accordingly.

Procedures are divided into very functional steps: integrate drawings, import point lists, define alarm classes, ready to go.

Any retrieved detail information is displayed in pop-up windows above the corresponding area screen.

Operation in the control centre supports the use of a mouse or a touch screen.

To further increase clarity for the operator, all labels of resources and accessories can be blanked out.

Great care was taken to provide a realistic visualisation with, for instance, round machine components clearly identified as being round.

This photo-like view greatly facilitates operation.

Where required, several views, i.e animated plan view and layout, were visualised.

Using CIMPLICITY, this was very easy.

GE Fanuc Automation is a leading global supplier of automation controls.

These products and services include a wide range of CNCs, motion control products, micro to high-end PLCs, monitoring and control software products, and CO2 and YAG lasers.

GE Fanuc Automation is a joint venture between GE and FANUC Ltd and the company's European headquarters are at GE Fanuc Automation Europe in Luxembourg.

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