From semiconductor equipment to packaging machinery, today's motion solutions must be fast, flexible, and smart. Moreover, implementations often face harrowing deadline pressure, as discussed in the examples below.
High-Precision Scribe Dicing System
Micro Processing Technology Inc's (MPT) original mission was to develop advanced computer control technology for the semiconductor equipment industry. MPT and SurvUs Co developed the highly automated Model 24-7 high-precision scribe dicing system with the help of National Instruments motion technology. MPT engineers designed the system "to run in an ultraprecise and reproducible manner, " notes MPT president P.C. Lindsey. The scribe stage travels at velocities up to 1 m/s, and the system processes up to 200 mm diameter wafers.
"We wrote all system software using NI LabVIEW," Lindsey continues. "The system performs motion control using NI-Motion software and an NI PCI-7356 motion control board. The system has six motion axes and an additional axis for the input from the force sensor. There are four linear motor and encoder stages in a gantry configuration with a vertical stage attached to the cross stage. In addition, there are two rotary stages. . . . Engineers can upgrade NI motion controllers in functionality by loading the latest version of the NI-Motion driver software, which in turn updates the firmware onboard the controller."
MPT developed the entire system with three man-years of effort.
"Based on my experience developing other semiconductor manufacturing systems of similar complexity, this system would have taken in more than 20 man-years of design and development effort without using National Instruments PAC platform with LabVIEW," states Lindsey. (For more, click here.)
Automated Cartoner
Packaging machine manufacturer R. A. Jones & Co Inc worked with automation suppliers, including Rockwell Automation, to develop the Criterion 2000 cartoner, which implements the newest Gen3 technologies. With a footprint just over 20 ft long by 7 ft wide, the machine uses 30% fewer mechanical parts than those needed by traditional cartoners. Customers have a choice of continuous or intermittent motion, a range of centers, and right- or left-hand versions. Rockwell's Kinetix integrated motion control solution "has greatly reduced the complexities and problems of previous machines," according to Darren Elliott, chief engineer at R. A. Jones. "We've been able to shift from around 100 I/O points down to about 50, just by streamlining the architecture."
The Gen3 architecture replaces many of the line-shaft-driven components of previous mechanical cartoners. The company also reduced its programming time by more than one-third thanks to integrated motion and sequential control, reduced I/O points, and ControlLogix ladder logic. And for the end user, product changeover times are reduced from as much as six hours to as little as 15 minutes. The machine's advanced diagnostics, built into the control system, allow feedback from various I/O points. (For more, click here.)
Horizontal Form/Fill/Seal Machine
Conflex Inc builds horizontal form/fill/seal machines that wrap everything from frozen pizzas to CDs. The first versions included simple relay logic that soon became outdated as users required even faster speeds, fewer manual adjustments, and networking capabilities. The company turned to GE Fanuc Automation for a compact solution that saves space and lowers overall costs by more than 20% both for Conflex and its customers.
"When we decided to build a servo-driven horizontal form/fill/seal machine, we wanted to keep it very simple, intelligent, and user-friendly," says Mark Lorenz, electrical applications engineer at Conflex. "We also wanted to minimize the mechanical adjustments that would be needed."
After specifying GE Fanuc's S2K servos for motion control, Lorenz saw that the servos could also perform all of the machine's logic, including the flexibility of multiple recipes for wrapping various products. Conflex was able to program the first prototype machine and ship it to a customer site within a two-day deadline. (For more, click here.)
Accurate Waterjet Cutting System
The biggest challenge faced by waterjet cutting systems is that they tend to be "flexible" tools, says Richard Carey, senior engineer at Calypso Waterjet Systems. This makes accurate waterjet circle and arc cutting more difficult than cutting straight lines. Flexibility most be compensated for by adjusting and controlling acceleration and velocities, something that Calypso could not do with G-code controllers.
The company addressed the concern by choosing Galil's 6-axis DMC-2163 Ethernet motion controller, a system with circular interpolation and the ability to compensate for mechanical backlash. Calypso's Shark waterjet system can now traverse over 500 ipm and achieve cut accuracies of ±0.003 in. tolerance or better.
"The Galil controller and its autotuning capability provided the much tighter servo loops and responsiveness necessary to get the quality, crisp circle and arc cuts required," Carey observes. "This allows us to run gantries with higher accelerations and velocities." Calypso runs a large amount of code through the controller, most of which is devoted to a streaming interpreter that allows Calypso to make use of Galil's powerful trip points. These coordinate single-axis and vector motion, which requires complex tool sequencing. (For more, click here.)
