Flexible manufacturing cell
Also available in: Català · Castellano
The three phases
- Feeding and sorting. A piston pushes the part out of the magazine, an arm with a suction cup carries it to the sorting area, the sensors decide whether it is metallic and a spring sensor measures its height. Wrong parts go to reject bin 1.
- Machining. A four-station rotary table (receiving, machining, checking and removal) drills a hole and a laser checks its depth. A conveyor takes it to colour inspection.
- Storage. An X-Y Cartesian manipulator with servomotors puts it away in a 16-slot warehouse (0–7 metallic, 8–15 non-metallic). Orders can be placed from the touch screen.
Control and safety
A general-purpose Omron PLC runs the program (GRAFCET in subroutines) and a second PLC controls the servomotors and the safety light curtains; they talk to each other through link bits. Solenoid valves, a signal tower, the emergency stop and the HMI screen complete the system.
What you learn
| Area | Element |
|---|---|
| Sensing | Inductive, capacitive, optical and reed sensors, plus special ones: colour, analogue spring and laser |
| Actuation | Single- and double-acting solenoid cylinders, rotary actuator, venturi suction cups, motors and servomotors |
| Control | GRAFCET, two PLCs, converting millimetres to pulses |
| Measurement | Function block that calculates part height and hole depth |
| Safety | Emergency stop, light curtains, signal tower |
In the interactive guide
Click a phase on the map to see its process step by step, and any component (A, S1, MC1…) to find out what it is, how it works and which signals it uses.
Interactive demo
Related concepts
PLC and GRAFCET
A PLC cyclically reads all its inputs, runs the program and updates the outputs. GRAFCET describes the process as a sequence of steps and transitions: each step waits for a condition before moving to the next.
Inductive and capacitive proximity sensors
The capacitive sensor detects any material because it changes its capacitance; the inductive one only detects metals because currents are induced in them. Using both, you know whether a part is metallic.
Pneumatic cylinders and solenoid valves
Compressed air moves the cylinders; solenoid valves are the bridge to the PLC. A monostable valve springs back to rest on its own when it loses the signal; a bistable one needs a signal for each movement and remembers its last position.
X-Y Cartesian manipulator and servomotors
Two perpendicular axes driven by servomotors with encoders. At start-up it finds the zero of each axis; then it converts coordinates in millimetres into pulses to reach each position exactly.