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Industrial Laser marking, Inkjet printing, and Camera vision inspection.
Epic Engineering, LLC has built a machine to use lasers and inkjet printers to mark or print on plastic containers. The marking and print are inspected by industrial vision cameras. The laser marking is performed by two Keyence MD-U1020C wide area laser markers. The lasers are able to print on four boxes simultaneously, two boxes per laser. The laser marking time is about 4 seconds, depending on complexity of the image. Keyence Laser Marker MD-U1000 Laser marking, one of four boxes. The Keyence laser markers use UV light to mark the plastic boxes. This method replaces the need for messy and expensive adhesive labels. The laser marked boxes are now 100% recyclable. Text and images are changed instantly by selecting different programs stored in the laser by the PLC via Ethernet/IP. The laser light is contained by the laser enclosure. Products move in and out via automatic gates that open and close. Laser light enclosure Inkjet25May 2020 -
Torque controlled buffer wheels
Epic designs and builds motion controls to control the torque of an AC motor driving buffer wheels using a servo controlled slide. The customer wanted a way to compensate for the wear of the buffer wheels over time and have a constant buffing force. Buffer force is proportional to the rotational torque of the buffer wheels. The buffer torque feedback is fed into the Siemens 1214 PLC torque regulator. The buffer wheels are mounted on a slide which moves in and out to apply the correct force on the part held by the robot. If the buffer wheel torque is less than set point, the servo motor controlled slide moves in, if more than set point the slide moves away from part. As the buffer wheel wears down, the slide will compensate to keep same force on part. As the robot turns the part and the distance changes, the slide will29Oct 2018 -
Epic designs and builds controls to apply RTV on lithium battery POD.
Epic Engineering, LLC designs and builds a controls system to apply RTV sealant to a lithium battery POD. The manufacturer previously manually applied the RTV sealant which made the process slow and inconsistent. Epic used Intelligent Actuator Inc. Robo Cylinders to move the RTV head to the perfect profile path. This robot saved the manufacturer a lot of time, money, and much less waste. Please see video. RTV Sealant Robot29Oct 2018 -
PLC power monitor helps manufacturer save $70,000 per year.
Epic Engineering designs a PLC to automatically shut down parts of a customers process when power usage goes above a certain threshold. A local brick and block manufacturer uses a lot of electric energy to produce bricks and concrete blocks. The manufacturer used to be on a A19 plan with PG&E where the demand was calculated by Kilowatts used and penalties for going into peak usage. They found that they rarely went over 500KW throughout the day. It was determined that if the process could be kept below the 500kw demand throughout the day, they would be able to move to a less expensive rate plan, A6. Epic used a PLC connected to the P,G,&E power meter to accumulate kilowatt hours used. P,G,&E uses a 15 minute average to calculate real time demand so we replicated that average in the PLC. A warning and fault threshold are operator adjustable on one of29Oct 2018 -
Indusoft integrates control between Genmark robot and Omron PLC controlled laser for wafer processing.
ndusoft was used to integrate a Genmark Robot with a Omron PLC controlled laser for wafer etching. The Genmark robot used a serial port for communication to the Indusoft PC HMI. The Omron PLC controlled laser used Ethernet for communication to the Indusoft PC HMI. VB Scripting was used in Indusoft to control sequencing between robot and laser. This is a temporarily set up and will be controlled with hardwire I/O point in the future.29Oct 2018 -
Found loose wire from 2904 miles away
This past week my customer was having issues with their spud winch #1 intermittently faulting out. We agreed to have conference call at 8am eastern time which was 5am California time. At this point, the drive was tripping out consistently which is what you want when troubleshooting. The large GE drive was indicating speed tracking error. This indicated a speed feedback problem. I had them try to run it while I monitored the drive speed feedback. There was no feedback at all even though the motor rotated several rotations before tripping out. I had my trusty electrician in New York measure the encoder supply voltage at the motor. He measured zero, not good. The encoder cable back to the drive is not a straight shot. The AC drive is actually shared between two motors, spud winch and an anchor winch motor. The feedback gets switched by a relay. I suspected29Oct 2018 -
Printing press unwinder going too fast!
Unwinder going too fast Recently I had a customer who said the unwind section on their printing press was going too fast. In fact, they had no control at all. When the section was started, the motor would try to go full speed. The maintenance person told me he tried adjusting various settings on the drive with no effect. I went to the plant to see what was going on. The DC field on the motor was okay, it had field current. Then we discovered there was a DC tachometer on the motor used for speed feedback to the drive. It would make sense if the tachometer wasn't providing feedback, then the drive would try to go 100% on . I hooked up my voltmeter to the DC tachometer output and we turned the unwinder by hand, no voltage on my meter. We thought we might have a bad tachometer so29Oct 2018 -
Printing press unwinder going too fast!
Recently I had a customer who said the unwind section on their printing press was going too fast.26Oct 2018 -
Found loose wire from 2904 miles away.
This past week my customer was having issues with their spud winch #1 intermittently faulting out.26Oct 2018 -
Epic designs and builds controls to apply RTV on lithium battery POD.
Epic Engineering, LLC designs and builds a controls system to apply RTV sealant to a lithium battery POD.26Oct 2018 -
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RECENT POSTS
Industrial Laser marking, Inkjet printing, and Camera vision inspection.
May, 25 2020Torque controlled buffer wheels
October, 29 2018Epic designs and builds controls to apply RTV on lithium battery POD.
October, 29 2018PLC power monitor helps manufacturer save $70,000 per year.
October, 29 2018Indusoft integrates control between Genmark robot and Omron PLC controlled laser for wafer processing.
October, 29 2018Found loose wire from 2904 miles away
October, 29 2018