Case Studies

All Categories

Rotary Cutter Control Using Siemens SiMotion

Posted in Consumer Goods, Manufacturing Automation and Intelligence, Motion Control

Summary

DMC provided a complete Siemens programming and HMI solution using SiMotion and WinCC Flex to control a rotary cutter that will be used at the end of a printing press. The rotary cutter has several mounted knives that cuts paper fed directly from the press into various sizes at very high speeds.

Sinamics

Solution

The Rotary Cutter is used at the end of a printing press to cut paper at very high speeds to a size specified by the user. It is a 3-axis system run by the Siemens motion controller, SiMotion. DMC designed the system with three main routines.  The Knife Setup Routine takes in a few parameters that are either manually entered or loaded from a job list and then calculates where the knives need to be positioned to cut the paper to the proper size. The Virtual Press Routine is used to run the rotary cutter based on a virtual press speed. This routine is used for testing and configuration purposes.  The Auto Mode Routine is the main routine. It is used when the rotary cutter is geared to the press. It follows the press speed and has registration capabilities.

The solution was designed to be flexible and easy to use from a user standpoint. The programming style was designed to be easy to maintain and allows for rapid future expandability.

Learn more about DMC Siemens SIMotion services.

Customer Benefits

  • Programming is flexible and easy to maintain - style and generic sections of the code can be easily reused in future projects.
  • Different jobs can be loaded from a job list - no need for the user to remember all parameters
  • Ability to run the system in a virtual "test" mode - no need for the press to be in full operation to run the rotary cutter automatically. Instead of real feedback from the press encoder, the cutter follows a virtual encoder whose speed is set from the HMI.
  • Maintenance screens - which display and allow for direct control of all of the IO in the system. This provides easy system troubleshooting.

Technologies

  • Siemens SiMotion D435 Motion Controller
  • Siemens WinCC Flexible User Interface
  • Sinamics Servo Drives