Located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Schmidt Technology Corp. has been providing the North American market with quality presses and technical support since 1992. A subsidiary of Schmidt Technology, a family led, medium-sized enterprise located in the Black Forest area of Germany, Schmidt grew out of a rich tradition of Black Forest watchmaking art, with its keen sense of precision. What began with the innovative development of technically refined writing instruments has evolved into a company with three divisions: writing instrument technology, sensors, and presses, exported to over 80 countries worldwide.
A Development Challenge
Schmidt introduced its first servo press 10 years ago, and also offers a comprehensive line of precision manual, air-powered, and hydropneumatic presses for manufacturing industries in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. With its most recent introduction of 7 ServoPress models plus systems expansion to include additional hardware and functions, certain challenges were presented to the Schmidt Technology control engineering staff in how to communicate electronic data between control systems that would be encountered at the customer site plus the additional hardware. Kepware’s communication software has come to the rescue.
In a recent medical application, for example, the PRC4000 ServoPress controller was required to provide force data to a GE Fanuc PLC that was functioning as master controller on an assembly line at the customer site. This application also required the involvement of providing status of force monitoring, sequence information, and real-time access to additional force and position data from two ServoPress modules.
Schmidt engineers did not have a GE PLC in-house to test the data transfer; however, they did have several Allen Bradley Micrologix PLCs on hand.
A Reliable Solution
The Schmidt Technology PRC4000 6-axis ServoPress controller is an open source logic and servo control unit that provides sequencing, calculating, process monitoring, SPC, and motion control, as well as a built-in HMI. This controller also contains an OPC server that is used as an interface to allow for real-time exchanging of data with OPC clients. By using an OPC interface, any word or Boolean information can be easily exchanged between the Schmidt controller and another PC-based control, HMI, or PLC.
Since Schmidt does not support a direct driver link to a GE Fanuc PLC, Schmidt engineers decided to review Kepware's OPC server suite (KEPServerEX) as well as Kepware's OPC system-bridging software package (LinkMaster). KEPServerEX would provide the Ethernet connection to the GE Fanuc PLC, and LinkMaster would bridge or "link" the OPC data between the Schmidt OPC server and KEPServerEX. During the development stage of this project, the fully functioning 2-hour demo packages of KEPServerEX and LinkMaster were downloaded from the Kepware website.
Because KEPServerEX also provides connectivity to Allen Bradley PLCs and GE Fanuc PLCs along with its 130+ other protocols, the Schmidt team was able to install the KEPServerEX OPC server suite and the LinkMaster application on the PRC4000 controller. They used Kepware's Allen Bradley DF1 connectivity to communicate directly to the PLC through a serial port.
Next, LinkMaster was quickly configured to acquire the data to/from the Schmidt OPC server, and map the integer and Boolean data directly to available integers and bits within the AB PLC. Due to the reliability and ease of use of the in-house evaluation system, Schmidt engineers made the decision to use Kepware's solution at the customer site.
Kepware's OPC server provides a single consistent interface to a variety of industrial protocols. This made the transition from the in-house AB to the on-site GE connectivity quickly and easily. KEPServerEX with GE connectivity and the bridge application LinkMaster were installed on the PRC4000 controller, allowing a successful and seamless exchange of data through the onboard Ethernet port.
This fast, easy, and reliable solution provided by LinkMaster prompted a final configuration featuring the use of LinkMaster to transfer data and status/control bits between three PRC4000 controllers and the GE PLC at the customer site.
Ongoing Benefits
Schmidt can confidently pursue any and all applications, regardless of PLC brands at the customer and be confident in knowing that their equipment will communicate successfully, plus they will not incur additional sales cycle costs from purchasing a plethora of PLC brands for testing.
“The customer’s voice is part of what feeds Schmidt Technology’s continuous desire and drive to offer new capabilities to stay on the cutting edge. As a result, bar code scanners were integrated with the press systems and the Kepware software made it possible as an ‘off the shelf’ solution,” stated Martin Frischknecht, president of Schmidt Technology.
Bar codes can be brought into the PressControl4000 through different means and used for several different purposes. A Bar code can be linked to a pressing operation where a particular graph can be matched up to a particular part ID. Other information can be tied to the graph as well, such as batch numbers, dataset name/number, date, time, static text, continuous counter or any other variable that pertains to a particular workpiece. A scanned bar code can be directly imported into the Kepware U-Con Server, which is linked to the PRC4000 (OPC server) via Linkmaster (OPC client).
Schmidt’s bar code systems provide:
- Linking data together: With a part ID, a part can be processed on a given day and then linked to its own process data; if a failure occurs 5 years down the road, the history can be tracked.
- Batch identification based on archived data.
- Archiving of data and traceability: The ability to take process data and link to a certain number.
- Medical, automotive, or any liability product, done daily, data attached to part ID: often done with bar code scanners or RFID tags.
Schmidt’s systems can contain multiple scanners, used for part tracking, tooling verification, lot number, etc. Alphanumeric characters are used for graph naming. Numeric data can be used as input variables specific to the workpiece. The bar code scanning capabilities and features include selecting a dataset, inputting the pressing criteria, labeling a graph with workpiece identification, and reading lot numbers.
Summary
Having the Kepware communications software has enabled Schmidt to save thousands of dollars on test equipment and testing, expanding their marketing reach to any and all customer sites, regardless of a site’s brand of controllers with which the Schmidt equipment needs to communicate upon arrival and shortening the cost and time of the sales cycle. In addition, they can expand their own systems to include additional hardware and its associated functionality and benefits without the cost of communications development, opening new doors of opportunity with development ease.
“Kepware is a very flexible tool, which helps us satisfy ever changing customer requirements in regard to data exchange and management with ease,” Frischknecht added. “Due to the adaptability, it is a cost-effective and efficient solution. We at Schmidt Technology find ourselves applying it more and more frequently.”