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HMI Upgrade for Flying Cut Machine

Posted in Automotive, Consumer Goods, Manufacturing Automation and Intelligence

Summary

The client had an existing machine which performed a flying cut based on an Allen-Bradley Micrologix 1000 and Tolomatic motion controller.  The machine had an obsolete HMI which was in need of replacement and an HMI with the capability of talking to both the PLC and motion controller was required.

Solution

A 5.7" Advantech TPC HMI was chosen due to its ability to provide rich user interface, flexible device configuration and its ability to be developed in Visual Studio 2008 C#.  The existing HMI interface functionality was replicated with many improvements added to utilize the benefits of the new controller. 

Using the ABLink drivers from Ingear allowed for rapid implementation of the PLC communication protocols.  The communication libraries built into C# allowed for straightforward development of the serial communication to the Tolomatic motion controller.

The client now has an HMI which is much easier to use than the old HMI and can be replicated to new machines in a very cost effective manner.

Customer Benefits

The client was able to realize a number of benefits from the new HMI which were not possible with the previous platform.

  • HMI storage of system parameters with intelligent downloading of parameters
  • Flexible and expandable ability to connect to a wide range of devices with minimal programming
  • Software developed on a platform which could be easily replicated for a wide variety of machines
  • QVGA display
  • Much faster and more responsive user interface

Technologies

 The technologies used for this system were: