Kimberly Clark Millicent S.A.
Carton Control
Palletisers
Other Details
One of these installations features three palletisers, with a moderate sized
pallet conveyor system and an extensive carton conveyor system. The other
features a single palletiser, with a small sized pallet conveyor system and a
moderate sized carton conveyor systems.
These installations are responsible for the development of the palletiser
PLC code and the palletiser operator interface described in the
“Palletisers” section. The
carton conveyor control algorithms are also of note.
Carton Control
The three palletiser system, is fed from three carton conveyors, with a
diverter allowing operations to continue if one or two of the palletisers are
being serviced. Before the diverter the three carton conveyors service nine
cartoners (three each).
Each cartoner has a dedicated section of conveyor, incorporating a length of
zero-pressure conveyor. Cartons would be accumulated on this
dedicated section of conveyor until sufficient catrons had been produced to form
a pallet load. This pallet load would then be released onto one of the three
main trunk conveyors and be conveyed in tact to one of the three palletisers.
The single palletiser system, is fed from a carton conveyor servicing two
cartoners. Again, each of these cartoners has its dedicated section of
conveyor to accumulate its cartons into pallet loads.
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Palletisers
The palletisers then must palletise the slug using the appropriate pattern,
and, while finishing, commence the palletising of the next slug, with usually a
different palletising pattern.
Since it takes some considerable of skill on the part of an operator to sort
out a palletiser when things go wrong, the operator interface for the
palletisers was developed to enable faster recovery from these problems by
personel less familiar with the machine. It also incorporates more convenient
pattern programming, rather than requiring a PLC programmer to be setting bits
in the data table.
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Other Details
The pallet conveyor system incorporates pallet destackers, alignment bars,
and stretch wrappers.
Communications between the “Movement Controller”
and the host computer system is via FTP/TCP-IP/Ethernet.
All PLCs are Allen-Bradley.
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