Glass products such as art pieces, camera lenses, bottles, and containers are widely used in our daily lives. Windows, light bulbs, windshields, and mirrors for vehicles of different shapes and sizes are also some common glass-made products for industrial manufacturing. To meet the massive demand and the high-quality processing requirements of glass production, Delta recently provided a convex glass processing solution that adopts Delta's Open CNC Controllers and brings a high-precision and high-efficiency convex glass cutting machine to a factory in Taiwan. The machine helps the factory cut different types of convex glass for vehicle rear-view mirrors. It achieves shapes and angles that can only be cut with conventional five-axis machines using only 4-axis synchronous control, saving wiring cost and maintaining high-end product quality and neatness.
Traditional glass manufacturers often employ 5-axis machines or laborers to cut glass. However, faced with today's diversified market needs, they must deal with challenges such as higher labor and wiring costs, unstable processing efficiency, and precision affected by human error. Issues such as inconsistent product quality, long processing times, and low production flexibility also happen constantly. To solve these problems, Delta's convex glass processing solution helps our customer apply automation equipment with a CNC numeric system that replaces manual cutting and 5-axis cutting machines to save time and labor costs, while achieving more delicate and diverse semi-finished products and upgrading technique and productivity.
This solution applies Delta's Open CNC Controller NC30EM Series to send signals synchronously to 4 sets of the AC Servo Drive ASDA-A2 Series and to precisely position the X, C, Z, and A axes. It uses X and C axes to adjust glass and cut the contour simultaneously, with the A axis controlling the angle of the cutter to match the glass surface and the Z axis controlling the height of the cutter. With the 4-axis synchronous control, the solution achieves the cutting quality and techniques that could once only be performed by conventional five-axes machines, while reducing wiring cost and space, and enhancing processing quality and efficiency for high-precision and high-speed glass processing.
Meeting the production requirements of our customer, the NC30EM Series offers an open structure with a flexible operation platform for a wide range of machine tools and industrial applications. Customers are able to modify machining operation programming, interfaces, and software via personal computers based on processing features and market requirements, reducing additional hardware cost and allowing real-time monitoring of machining precision and productivity. Moreover, the AC Servo Drive ASDA-A2 Series features high-sampling fine interpolation commands to provide smooth positioning control. During the machining processes, it automatically calculates corner deceleration to help each axis maintain its precision and speed at corners, while increasing the fineness of the glass surface processed.
In actual applications, Delta's convex glass processing solution brings the following benefits to our customer:
• Delta's total solution for highly integrated and high-efficiency machining: Delta's convex glass processing solution uses the Open CNC Controller NC30EM Series that instantaneously connects and controls feeding servo drives and motors, spindle permanent magnet motors, and other core components. It supports Ethernet to help our customer integrate the information of the open CNC controller into their personal platform, providing a compatible solution. In addition, the NC30EM Series offers an embedded system with multiple CPUs and superior surface finishing that achieves multitasking and stable operating performance of its controllers, while optimizing the high-precision production quality and machining standards of glass cutting.
• High-end AC Servo Drive for precise cutting positioning: This solution adopts Delta's AC Servo Drive ASDA-A2 Series which supports multiple network communications such as CANopen, DMCNET, and EtherCAT for connecting a variety of devices for a comprehensive motion control system. With its high responsiveness, it settles commands within 1ms and positions convex glass speedily and precisely based on its shape and features. Additionally, the solution's AC Servo Motor ECMA Series features incremental encoders with 20-bit resolution that eliminate unstable commands at low speed and elevates the accuracy and performance of glass cutting, effectively reducing defect rates.
• Multi-axis synchronous control with high-speed DMCNET full-digital network communication: This solution employs Delta's Motion Control NETwork (DMCNET) that is able to control multiple devices such as servo motors, servo drives, and I/O modules with highly flexible and integrated functions. The network provides fast and high-precision command communication with strong resistance to noise, and solves high-speed pulse command loss problems to smoothly control servo drives and motors and improve machining efficiency. In addition, the full-digital network communication not only saves wiring time and cost, but also offers a high-security IC device for confidential programming protection.
Delta's convex glass processing solution builds a flexible, high-speed, and high-precision convex glass cutting machine with high-precision control and drive devices and a highly integrated communication network for our customer. Our solution not only optimizes their manufacturing quality and efficiency with a high-end control system and simplified operation interfaces, but also reduces wiring cost with a comprehensive solution that ensures an outstanding future.