Moeller Electric Punches Sticks!

Beech wood is an excellent material for making lollipop sticks. It’s inexpensive, environmentally friendly, tasteless, doesn’t splinter and has a smooth non-absorbent surface so it’s no surprise that beech sticks are used in vast quantities by leading ice-cream manufacturers. However, making these very ordinary looking little sticks is actually quite a complex task and as such they are usually made by specialist suppliers, such as Karl Otto Knauf, rather than the ice-cream manufacturers themselves.

The stick manufacturing process starts with beech trunks that are cut to length and stripped of their bark. After steaming, the prepared trunks are converted to veneer, which is wound in the form of a reel. The ice cream sticks are punched out of the veneer, which is continuously checked for cracks, splits and thickness.

When developing a new punching machine to increase the production of sticks, the design team at Karl Otto Knauf wanted a control solution that would combine economy and reliability with versatility and ease of modification. To meet these requirements, the team chose a Moeller XC100 modular PLC.

This competitively priced unit offers high speed processing, an extensive range of I/O options and integrated support for CANopen networking. The XC100 was also an attractive choice for Karl Otto Knauf’s designers because it uses the popular CoDeSys programming tools. These tools are an implementation of the IEC1131-3 programming system, which is supported by an alliance of leading control system manufacturers.

Since the control panel for the punching machine incorporates a large number of Moeller Electric xStart motor starters, the Karl Otto Knauf design team opted not to use conventional wiring between the XC100 controller and the starters, but instead to adopt the new Moeller Electric SmartWire panel wiring system. The motor starters are snapped onto a SASY60i modular busbar system for rapid mounting and space saving in the panel.

Designed to bring to panel wiring all of the flexibility and cost savings that fieldbus systems provide for field wiring, SmartWire allows starters within the control panel to be linked to the controller using pre-fabricated plug-in cables. Not only does this approach dramatically reduce the time needed for wiring the panel, it also makes wiring errors almost impossible, which means that there are further big time savings when the panel is tested.

In the Karl Otto Knauf application, the SmartWire system is linked to the XC100 via the controller’s integrated CANopen gateway. The controller receives signals via SmartWire about the status of the contactors and the motor protection circuit breakers, and can therefore evaluate the operational condition of the machine, as well as passing switching signals from the controller via SmartWire to operate the starters.

After the SmartWire installation is completed, all that is needed to address the motor starters is to press a button on the gateway so that the addresses are assigned automatically.

“The XC100 programmable automation controller is fast, versatile and easy to program,” said Werner Behrens, head of the electrical engineering department at Karl Otto Knauf, “and it has proved to be an ideal choice for this project. Using the controller in conjunction with SmartWire has produced further big benefits. It saved a lot of time on building the panel and, of course, there were no wiring errors to be sorted out during testing.”

“The control panel is also very neat in appearance,” he continued, “and another advantage is that, should we ever need to modify it, the SmartWire wiring is almost as simple to change as the program in the XC100. Even better, the SmartWire system automatically sets up its own addressing, so even that’s taken care of without fuss or problems.”

The XC100 modular automation controller used by Karl Otto Knauf for this project is one of a comprehensive range of automation control products available from Moeller Electric. The range also includes easyRelay intelligent relays for simple applications and XC200 modular controllers that offer integrated Ethernet functionality. SmartWire is fully compatible with all controllers in the Moeller Electric range, as well as with products from many other manufacturers.