Photo-Eye Placement on an Accumulation Zone: Distance From the Discharge and What a Long Box Does

Three zones in side view with the eye 150 mm back from the discharge: a stopped 600 mm carton with 750 mm of zone behind it, and a stopped 1219 mm carton with 131 mm

A 42EF retroreflective eye bolted 150 mm back from the discharge roller of a 1.5 m zone stops a 600 mm carton with 750 mm of zone still behind it, and stops a 1219 mm carton with 131 mm. Move the same eye to 50 mm from the discharge and the first carton overshoots into … Read more

Singulation on a Zero-Pressure Accumulation Conveyor: The Release Rule That Stops Two Boxes Leaving Together

Four accumulation zones with eye positions, the 1.5 m pitch, and the length of conveyor that no photo-eye covers

On a 1.5 m zone pitch at 0.28 m/s, a 600 mm carton is invisible to both photo-eyes for 3.2 seconds of its journey between them. An upstream zone whose release permissive is nothing more than “the next eye is clear” will use that window to send a second carton, and the two of them … Read more

A Conveyor Jam Timer That Does Not Nuisance-Trip: Setting the Time From Zone Length and Belt Speed

Three zones of an accumulation conveyor with zone length, photo-eye position and belt speed marked, and the eye-to-eye pitch that sets the transit timer

Time it with a stopwatch before you type anything into the preset: the longest carton you run, crossing the photo-eye, on the slowest zone. A 1219 mm carton at 0.28 m/s sits on that eye for 4.35 seconds, which is why the 2000 ms that came across with the copied project trips every time the … Read more

Speed Matching Two Conveyor Sections So Product Does Not Bunch at the Transfer

The transfer in side view: the takeaway at 0.500 m/s handing over the nose-over to the palletiser infeed at 0.462 m/s, a 1219 mm carton bridging the gap with its nose on the slow belt, the pitch closing from 1429 to 1320 mm, the 210 mm gap becoming 101, and PE_X 0.6 m past the transfer

Two PowerFlex 525s with 42.50 Hz on both keypads were running the takeaway at 0.500 m/s and the palletiser infeed it hands over to at 0.462 m/s, and every carton that crossed the transfer between them arrived 7.6% closer to the one in front than it had left. A 1219 mm carton that left the … Read more

Commanding a PowerFlex 525 from a ControlLogix: The Command Word, the Reference and the Status Bits

Bit 0 of the PowerFlex 525 logic command word is Normal Stop, and it has to be sitting at 0 before bit 1 will ever start the drive. That footnote under the table in Appendix D of 520COM-UM001 is behind most of the drives that show a green connection in the I/O tree and still … Read more

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