AE-PLC-MR1 Usine-école de Table Rotative : Alimentation, Contrôle de Qualité et Assemblage (étude dimensionnelle)

The Rotary Table Station: Feeding, Quality Control and Assembly (dimensional study), "AE-PLC-MR1", has been designed by EDIBON to study automatic rotary table systems for mounting, quality control, and feeding parts. It integrates a modular design with PLC, pneumatic circuit, and industrial sensors.

The "AE-PLC-MR1" is an automatic rotary table with a feeder, quality control and mounting system integrated into it. The "AE-PLC-MR1" has a vertical storage, the system provides pieces one by one to the rotary table, then, a quality control system checks that the piece has the correct dimensions and material. Finally, if the part is appropriated, is mounted with lid. If the part has not the correct dimensions or material is discarded by the rotary table.

The "AE-PLC-MR1" workstation is designed as a modular system to facilitate the understanding.

The main components are:

• The PLC: is composed by the CPU limit and all extra modules needed to perform a corrent working of the workstation and all the extra modules needed to perform a correct working of the workstation.
• The Control Panel: with start/stop button, emergency pushbutton, reset button, light indicators to show current state of the process, etc.
• The Pneumatic Circuit: contains the required solenoid valves, the pressure components, the filters and regulators to assure the appropriate working of the unit.
• The Workstation: it is composed by real industrial components used by the rotary table systems such as reed sensors, presence sensors, DC motor, inductive sensors, rotary table with 8 positions, etc.

The "AE-PLC-MR1" is an independent workstation that can work alone and/or in conjunction with other workstation to make up a complete Flexible Manufacturing System*.

*The Flexible manufacturing systems product list is available at the "6.-MECHATRONICS, AUTOMATION AND COMPUMECHATRONICS" area.

The pneumatic circuit and the workstation are distributed in the following sections:

• Air Treatment System: it contains a filter-regulator block with a water trap and shut-off valve to control the air pressure input to the unit. Includes a dual-scale pressure gauge to visualize the pressure level supplied to the unit.
• Parts Feeding Section: it contains vertical storage to store the parts. The parts are supplied to the unit one by one through a double-acting cylinder. Each of the two inputs of the double-acting cylinder has an adjustable airflow valve with a bypass to regulate the cylinder speed.
• Parts Displacement Section: it is a rotating table designed to move the input parts to the verification and classification areas. The table is powered by a DC motor that includes an encoder and brake.
• Parts Verification Section: it is designed to detect if the parts supplied to the unit have a hole in the center and if the material of the parts is metal or PVC. The parts verification module checks these features for further classification of unwanted parts. These verifications are carried out using height and inductive sensors.
• Parts Sorting Section: it is designed to classify the parts if the part does not have the desired characteristic, the classification telescopic suction cups are activated, and the part is stored in the unwanted parts classification area, and if the part has the desired characteristic, the gripper or rotary actuator for classification is activated, and the part is stored in the good parts area.
• Signaling Tower: it contains green, yellow, and red LED lights to indicate the system's status.
• Solenoid Valve Block: it is a distributor block of pneumatic valves with twelve solenoid valves, two of which function as 3/2 monostable solenoid valves, six as 5/2 monostable solenoid valves, and four as 5/2 bistable solenoid valves.
• Electrical Terminal Block: it contains all accessible and identified unit signals for manual unit checking. The electrical terminal block has color-coded terminals to help the user identify the type of each signal, and it also contains the name of each signal.