Weighing and Packaging Machine

Introduction  
Automatic and highly accurate weighing & packaging machines are critical for many sectors, like pharmaceutical, medicine, food & beverage, jewelry, gold, silver, and more. After the weighing process, a conveyor system will transport the material to the packaging system. In recent years, these automatic weighing & packing devices have started to include intelligent features such as flexible orders and more detailed production systems. One client of Advantech’s was looking to
upgrade their weighing and packaging machinery with a powerful PAC to achieve high-precision driving with high-end capabilities.    

System Requirements  
In the past this customer had been using a PLC with a touchscreen, which was causing them a lot of problems, such as difficulty in integrating 3rd party weighing scales via communication interface, difficulty in PLC motion control and interlock control functions, and running out of memory for control and production parameters. They were looking for a powerful new PAC to realize easy expansion capabilities with simple secondary development to achieve high-precision driving with advanced features. Advantech’s APAX-6571XPE and AMAX-2000 series were the ideal solution to integrate motion, networking & information processing functionality.

Project Implementation  
 

System Description  
This system uses Advantech’s APAX-6571XPE controller and realizes complicated processing by integrating high-precision motors and high-power variable frequency drives. Combining digital input and output achieves integration and optimization of incorporated control. Through the built-in AMONet port, AMAX-2242/J2S and AMAX-2756SY can be managed by APAX-6571XPE. AMAX-2242/J2S controls 4 Mitsubishi motors revolving the conveyer belt. AMAX-2756SYreceives digital sensor signals and generates output signals to control LED indicator, buzzer, switches and buttons. To get the weight information of the object, ADAM-4117 is connected through RS-485 to measure the analog signal from the weighing-scale. FPM-3120G and its resistive touchscreen functionality complete the system with flexible HMI. AMONet has been implemented to ensure time-deterministic control with 1 ms time interval. APAX system provides C and .NET API for high-performance motion and DI/O control. Furthermore, Microsoft embedded systems allows conversion and storage between the HMI and database to be easily realized, while production data can be transmitted to the back database via Ethernet.

Conclusion  
This application focuses on high accuracy measurement and motion control. By connecting APAX-6571XPE with ADAM-4000 and AMONet motion modules, the system integration effort has been greatly shortened, improving both reliability and accuracy. By integrating a high-precision motor and high-speed data acquisition modules, the overall system cost has been greatly reduced as well, reducing the overall wiring & cabling cost. With the help of high speed computing, mass storage and versatile communication interfaces, the system now meets the requirements of rapid communication with high-precision weighing and quick data acquisition.

System Diagram