Delta's Servo System Builds High Speed and High-Precision Food Sorting and Packaging Solution

Material sorting is one of the important processes for food and medical packaging. Traditionally, material sorting requires laborers to pick up the processed materials spread on a conveyor, and put them into packaging containers to complete the process. Packaging quality and sanitation relies heavily on laborers' inspection, judgment and correct and hygienic operation. However, the traditional material sorting process may easily be prolonged due to exchanging shifts or human error such as miscounting the amount of materials, while sanitation can be a major quality issue if materials are contaminated with dirt or bacteria due to laborers' physical contact or other reasons. To amend the situation, the modern packaging industry has started implementing production line automation to reduce labor cost and ensure product quality and a hygienic work environment.

Considering the production needs of customers, Delta recently provided a high-precision and highly efficient material sorting solution for material arrangement and packaging to a chocolate factory in Mainland China. This solution adopts Delta's servo systems for the automatic and precise vibration control of six conveyor belts to evenly scatter chocolates on the conveyors for the ensuing packaging processes. With Delta's solution, the production lines are capable of accurately arranging 400 pieces of chocolate and sending them to containers within one minute, greatly enhancing operation efficiency and productivity for the customer.

Delta's material sorting solution employs two Delta AC Servo Drive ASDA-M Series to simultaneously control six sets of AC Servo Motors ECMA Series and execute vibration motion of the six conveyors. The ASDA-MJ Series is equipped with built-in motion control and PLC functions, and guarantees smooth, precise motion control while achieving the synchronous vibration of multiple conveyors for chocolate scattering. In addition, by integrating with the HMI DOP-B Series, the solution provides real-time production monitoring functions that enable customers to adjust control commands, the speed of the conveyors, and solve incidents in real time. The solution has successfully helped Delta's customer build up a flawless, highly efficient, timesaving, automatic packaging system with the following benefits:

• High-precision control system to enhance operation efficiency: Delta's solution adopts Delta AC Servo Drive ASDA-M Series that consists of three-in-one servo drives to perform three sets of motion control and interpolation simultaneously and offer a real-time, seamless and multi-functional operation command. Additionally, the control system utilizes the shortest path correction which is able to shake and arrange 400 pieces of food materials in 1 minute. The feature brings both benefits of enhancing the packaging speed and decreasing the defect rate for our customers.

• Flexible development platform to meet unique requirements: This solution offers a secondary development platform that allows users to set up and distribute the memory space of a controller and each device to achieve highly efficient control and effective memory capacity management. With the built-in flash memory, the main host is also capable of saving data during a certain period. This is very helpful for dealing with incidents or problems such as power outages, battery replacement, and machine durability.

• Simple wiring for easy installation: The three motors matched with the two 3-axis servo drives share one and the same wiring, saving both installation space and wiring cost for customers.

By enhancing the productivity and the precision of packaging lines, Delta's material sorting solution has not only successfully reduced production time, cost, defect rate, and human error, but also ultimately increased production quality and industry competitiveness for the customer. This solution is perfect for the food packaging industry, as well as for a wide range of industries, including pill blister boxing machines.