Case Studies

Plastic Beverage Containers

Multi-Station Permeability Test Stand

Posted in Consumer Goods, Food and Beverage, LabVIEW, Manufacturing Automation and Intelligence, Test & Measurement Automation

Summary

DMC worked with its client, a world-wide manufacturer of plastic food and beverage containers, to improve the overall usefulness and functionality of their Multi-station Oxygen Permeability Test Stand.

Gas Panel Hardware

Gas Panel Hardware

System Connection Diagram

System Connection Diagram

Software User Interface

Software User Interface

Solution

DMC collaborated with the client’s technical staff to define hardware and software specifications for an upgrade of their existing Oxygen Permeability Test Stand.   To achieve all of the defined goals, the solution required a complete upgrade of the system data acquisition hardware and a thorough redesign of the test control software.  The resulting Test Application Software leveraged DMC’s LabView state machine template to lace together a seamless solution between the new NI CompactDAQ data acquisition hardware and the client’s existing test stand equipment.

Customer Benefits

  • Increased Capacity allows cost and time effective testing
  • Increased operator effeciency with rapid test setup and intuitive 'at a glance' test status displays
  • Self-calibration routines increase test accuracy
  • Non-volatile storage of system state improves reliability by allowing interrupted tests to resume from last state

Technologies

  • National Instruments LabView
  • National Instruments Compact DAQ (cDAQ) Hardware
  • RS232 Serial Communications
  • RS485 Serial Communications
  • TDMS Data File Storage