Innovative Drive Technology for Your Packaging Machines
October 10, 2024
Packaging machines are as diverse as the range of applications that they are built for. Manufacturers like you, however, are faced with the same requirements over and over again. Regardless of whether your customers need a packaging system for food, pharmaceutical, cleaning, or cosmetic products, they will be looking for a system that demonstrates impressive quality and performance, saves resources, can be used flexibly to accommodate small batch sizes, and is scalable.
To meet these requirements, you need leading drive and motion control solutions – ideally from a system supplier that can give you perfectly harmonized options for both. That’s where Beckhoff Automation comes in. Beckhoff’s strength lies in combining a deep understanding of the industry with innovative strength – through TwinCAT MC3, for example, their latest generation of motion control for systems with an unlimited number of axes.
Beckhoff’s benefits for you:
- drive technology and motion control from a single source
- a range of modular systems for high levels of modularity and scalability
- intelligent transport systems such as XTS and XPlanar
- TwinCAT MC3 – the latest generation of motion control
- comprehensive software libraries
Conquer the toughest engineering challenges with Beckhoff’s drive solutions.
High productivity and quality
Speed and precision in complex processes
Demanding packaging processes involve countless steps – including gripping, filling, closing, placing, marking, and ejecting, all of which need to run quickly, precisely, and efficiently in a single machine.
These come with engineering challenges:
- short cycle times due to the high speed required for drive solutions
- precisely synchronized sequences across all actuators, subsystems, and motion axes
- integrated communication from the smallest sensor to cloud infrastructure
Beckhoff provides you with everything you need:
- With TwinCAT MC3, you can program precisely synchronized sequences across an unlimited number of motion axes in a hardware-independent manner.
- PC-based control and TwinCAT provide a uniform software and engineering platform that ensures integrated automation and communication.
- An extensive portfolio of high-performance, scalable drives and system solutions for packaging machines gives you plenty of choice.
Ideal for small batch sizes
Excellent flexibility and fast format changes
Small batch sizes and short product life cycles require flexible packaging machines.
The engineering challenges you face include:
- making processes versatile – by simply adding or skipping processing stations, using product-specific transport routes, or harnessing the ability to handle products of different sizes
- minimizing conversion costs – because solutions that are highly versatile shouldn’t compromise on efficiency; this requires solutions that keep manual processes and retooling times to a minimum and can be scaled as required
Beckhoff provides the hardware and software you need to achieve this:
- With the XTS linear transport system and the XPlanar planar motor system, you have a choice of two revolutionary systems for designing packaging processes that are variable and optimized for small batch sizes.
- Manual retooling is thus rarely necessary – instead, you can simply adapt the process parameters and sequences for new products or formats in the software using TwinCAT.
Saving resources
Reduced carbon footprint and costs
Reducing the amount of raw materials and energy used in packaging processes makes economic sense and helps ensure compliance with regulations.
For manufacturers and developers, this means:
- Machines need to work in a way that conserves raw materials and consumes little energy.
- The less-is-more approach can also be adopted when it comes to space requirements, wiring, mechanical elements, and maintenance.
These requirements can be met with drive solutions from Beckhoff:
- They ensure sustainability with TwinCAT MC3 because synchronizing every process and motion sequence saves both raw materials and energy. TwinCAT MC3 maximizes the performance potential that the CPU cores hold – so fewer PCs than usual are required for the same control tasks, cutting down on resources and costs.
- Other technologies are also available. The spectrum ranges from distributed drive systems – which are installed control cabinet-free with an integrated servo amplifier, reducing space and cable routing – to application-specific drives.
- The MX-System, which allows machines and systems to be automated without a central control cabinet, provides another method of saving installation space and costs.
High-tech options for your packaging processes
TwinCAT MC3: Next-generation motion control
TwinCAT MC3 sets new motion control standards. The new development boosts the speed, precision, and synchronization of all motion sequences involved in packaging processes. More scalability and openness provide added benefits – including when it comes to integrating different drive and robotic systems.
Highlights and advantages:
- Multi-core and multi-task support: TwinCAT MC3 can be distributed across multiple CPU cores, with synchronized movements across all the cores for full design freedom. Multitask support also assures this by allowing you to operate axes with different cycle times on a single core – with optimization for different tasks and speeds.
- Limitless axes: Unlike TwinCAT NC2, the number of axes in TwinCAT MC3 is unlimited.
- Hardware-independent programming: TwinCAT MC3abstracts axes into axis objects, decoupling hardware and programming. This allows you to program without a connection to the hardware and have one control platform for all drive systems.
XTS and XPlanar – flexibility thanks to intelligent transport systems
How do you make the transport routes in packaging machines more flexible and efficient? With intelligent systems such as the linear eXtended Transport System (XTS) or the XPlanar planar motor system. Both use the principle of passive movers and give you complete freedom when designing the system topology and transport routes. With XTS and XPlanar, this means that machines and systems can be fully rethought and redesigned.
With XTS, the eXtended Transport System, the magnetically driven movers travel along a path with fully integrated drive modules. This allows you to implement open or closed path layouts in countless geometries. Here’s a tip: the XTS movers are also available with No Cable Technology (NCT) and can therefore be expanded into mobile handling and processing stations.
The XPlanar eXtended planar motor system gives the movers even more flexibility. The tile-shaped product carriers float in a magnetic field and move with up to six degrees of freedom in two dimensions over individually arranged XPlanar tiles – with precision, no wear, and no noise at speeds of up to 2 m/s.
Beckhoff’s portfolio – scalable and tailored to your requirements
Whether you’re looking for something highly dynamic, particularly space-saving, optimized for the highest hygiene standards, or individually tailored to suit every single one of your needs, Beckhoff can provide exactly the drive solution you need to stand out from the competition as a manufacturer of packaging machines and systems. Their system solutions are inherently freely scalable, open to technology, and designed for efficiency and sustainability – making them suitable for your needs now and in the future.
Their distributed drive technology is an example of this: Innovative servo drives such as the AMP8000 or AMI8100 feature integrated servo amplifiers with EtherCAT integration. The benefit of these drives is that they allow you to create control cabinet-free machine concepts that save space and meters of cable, and minimize maintenance costs.
What about drive solutions for specific application environments or special requirements? Beckhoff also have the right expertise to develop these for you. A recent example is a drive with a water-cooled motor in a stainless-steel design – optimized for high speeds at high ambient temperatures. With the TwinCAT 3 Motion Designer, they provide a powerful and versatile tool for customizing the design of your drive solutions.
More Information
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