Electricity and Control September 2023

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

Packaging high-volume consumer goods, fast Shane Novacek, Beckhoff USA

The CP-30 case packer developed by US machine builder RA Jones is an excellent example of customised machine design. It is a high-performance case packer for a large, multinational manufacturer of coffee products. In the application, high-volume products are fed in at such speeds that a high level of automation was crucial for continuous operation.This was implemented using EtherCAT and PC-based control and drive technology from Beckhoff.

B est known for a wide range of standard packaging machines for aerosols, cup filling, chub packag ing, multi-packing, pouching, case packing and cartoning, RA Jones also offers completely customised machinery. The company is part of the Italy-based Coesia Group of packaging machine builders and serves many of the world’s biggest brands in consumer products with highly automated primary and secondary packaging ma chines. The machines are used to package food and bev erage products, over-the-counter medications, and other high-volume consumer products. RA Jones leans on its over 100 years of packaging industry experience to back up the support given to every installation in the field. Highly automated packaging When RA Jones was contracted by a manufacturer of coffee products to develop a case packing machine, the sheer volume of customised equipment was a tall order, with 12 machines to be produced in a tight timeframe, and so was the high level of automation required by the end user. “With coffee products coming in as fast as 1 200 per minute, the machines had to run continuously, even in the event of a jam,” said Bob Burkhardt, Product Portfolio Manager for Cartoning, Robotics & Pouching at RA Jones. “So we

sought a machine control platform that could automatically diagnose and correct machine stoppage without needing an operator to make manual adjustments. This eliminates the burden on workers to stop production and pull reject boxes and is crucial in such a fast-paced production environment.” The CP-30 machine automates all aspects of case pack ing, including jam clearance and packaging changeovers via more than 70 dynamically controlled servo axes. It can automatically eject cases that don’t open correctly under the magazine, without stopping the packaging process. The machines feature a case feed robot inside to move flat corrugated cardboard into the case erecting segment. “We worked with Beckhoff application engineers to cre ate customised kinematics software for this specialised ro bot,” Burkhardt said. “While similar to a SCARA, this robot is completely customised to provide a high degree of rotation for the pick head as it pulls cardboard out of the magazine.” If the case fails to open, sensors will automatically detect this, and the pick head will reject the case. Afterwards, the case feed robot will pick a new case. The automated reject handling is a key benefit for the end user, as is the high throughput and flexibility in carton handling. Automation from a single source “The processing power we get from PC-based control is impressive,” said Nick Werner, Custom Controls Group at RA Jones. “Practically speaking, this means the difference between implementing one Beckhoff controller and having to juggle multiple controllers from a traditional PLC vendor to handle machine automation.” A Beckhoff C6030 Industrial PC (IPC) with Intel ® Core™ i7 processor provides ample power for all the computationally intensive functions in case packing. Austin Rismiller, Electrical Project Engineer, Research & Development/Innovation at RA Jones noted, “One of the things we observed with the Beckhoff IPC was impressively low scan times – around 1 millisecond scan time for more than 70 servo axes.” Another enabler of low scan times is the fast communication over the EtherCAT protocol con necting all drives and I/O on the CP-30. “EtherCAT provides an outstanding level of speed in our

© RA Jones

RA Jones developed the CP-30 case packer for a large, multinational manufacturer of coffee products for the consumer market.

4 Electricity + Control SEPTEMBER 2023