The original system was discontinued by the manufacturer and provided several obstacles to the local maintenance department. Most of the documentation remained in machine builders native language of Japanese and the system hardware consisted of custom integrated circuits and unsupported or hard to obtain components. The design was unreliable from initial installation and maintained an average up-time around 70%.

 Industrial Informatics, Inc. was contracted to determine the feasibility of retrofitting the existing equipment. After studying the current operation and theavailability of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) replacement components, it was determined that a retrofit was possible.

 Industrial Informatics, Inc. provided a solution built around the Allen-Bradley ControlLogix PAC (programmable automation control) platform using a SERCOS fiber ring network to interface with Kinetix drives for integrated motion control. All motors were replaced with Allen-Bradley TL and MP series servos. We kept the Hirata SCARA robots and implemented on-board Cognex vision systems to correct for part misalignment. Pneumatic actuators were controlled by SMC valve packs and interfaced with the PLC over an existing Allen-Bradley Remote I/O network. The station was sequenced with the assembly line PLC5 through a DH+ (Data Highway Plus) connection and interfaced with an AS400 mainframe for product composition and identification. Industrial Informatics, Inc. wrote a custom interface using Visual Studio and OPC (Ole for Process Control) with Kepware KepServerEx over Ethernet/IP to communicate with the various processors. We created custom drivers that integrated the robot control into the ControlLogix PAC creating a single location for all of the machine logic. The final solution provided a simple flexible interface that allows the customer to create profiles for existing products and implement future roll outs without additional programming.

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