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#Product Trends

Packaging Automation with IO-Link

The label printing occurs in the middle of the packaging cycle. Due to safety regulations, the area is blocked off during production. If configuration of a specific luminosity sensor for different printing requirements is needed during the packaging process, a technician is required to turn off all the equipment between production runs to access the luminosity sensor for reconfiguration. This required the technician to go through all the safety access points on the assembly line before reaching the sensor, and the downtime costs the company time and a lot of money. In addition, a long screwdriver has to be used to bypass the required safety barrier. This action is not just inconvenient and clumsy, but dangerous for the technician.

As well as changing the configuration method of the luminosity sensor, the company wanted to gain easy access to process data from a photoelectric sensor from a different manufacturer. This sensor detects the number of products coming off the line. It was a challenge for the company to make manufacturing adjustments in a timely fashion, as the data was hard to access and required additional PLC programs to be written.

In addition to remote configuration and accessing process data, the company also needed a solution to easily integrate sensors from multiple manufacturers. In production, a variety of sensors were used to meet the specific needs of each system. Having a multitude of manufacturers'' sensors made installation, maintenance, and monitoring cumbersome. The company was seeking to increase efficiency by using a central management system for all sensors.

The company knew that the IO-Link standard was the answer because it provided the advanced capabilities required and would be simple to install in the existing architecture. The company had purchased IO-Link enabled sensors, but also needed a master to network them together. Other IO-Link masters provided some functionality, but posed concerns with product form factor and ease of integration with the PLC. Comtrol''s IO-Link Master 4-EIP (IOLM 4-EIP) was selected because it solved all these difficulties:

For more information, please contact sales@comtrol.com, or visit www.comtrol.com/io-link.

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  • Comtrol Corporation

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