Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2023-12-15 Origin: Site
Closely integrating digital control and computing technology with the machine design and innovation process in the printing industry can provide printing equipment manufacturers with ideas and inspiration for efficient machine development.This article takes B&R's engineering design in the printing field as an example, combined with the development of the industry, to introduce how to use digital technology to improve the efficiency of innovation and development of printing equipment.
Today, the wave of digitalization is roaring.For enterprises, digital transformation means continuously improving the company's sustainable competitiveness through digitalization and building soft power.Facing the numerous digital trends, we must clearly realize that there are many differences between equipment manufacturing companies and discrete assembly companies. Each industry needs to combine its own characteristics and choose appropriate innovative organization and planning, methods and tools.
With digitalization, we aim to achieve innovative design to gain continued competitiveness in the market.The characteristics of digitalization lie in flexibility, in that it can encapsulate Know-How and protect intellectual property rights, and in that it establishes a foundation for continuous innovation through digitalization, because the distinctive feature of digitalization is also the inheritance and reuse of knowledge.
Innovation is a rigorous process
Equipment development in the manufacturing industry requires rigorous industrial design processes to support it.Material science provides us with the physical and chemical properties of ink, paper and film, and the integrated design of materials, machinery, electrical control and transmission can stabilize processing and obtain the required high-quality products.These must be converged to economy through modeling and simulation, repeated testing, and software packaging, that is, a cost-effective machine can be obtained.The technology formed must be reusable, so that the high cost of the machine in the research and development stage can be diluted and thus competitive.As shown in Figure 1, innovation forms reusable knowledge through the convergence of scientific knowledge and engineering, thereby bringing value to users.
Figure 1 Innovation is a rigorous process
Since the printing industry is a complex system that integrates materials (paper, film), mechanical transmission, and control, digitization covers its digital design, giving machines flexibility, and the digital capabilities of the machine as a digital node in the printing factory to provide operation management.Remote maintenance and diagnosis are based on digital methods to reduce costs. For example, cloud platforms are more economical than dedicated network systems.
Figure 2 OEE calculation method
Innovative, user-oriented design
For various terminal manufacturers, OEE is the most intuitive comprehensive indicator for evaluating machines. As shown in Figure 2, the calculation of OEE is usually determined by three factors: availability, performance, and quality.If we switch to a printing press, we can analyze OEE as follows:
1. Availability
Focus on equipment failures, setup and adjustments.Because mechanical failure and the configuration of mechanical and electrical parameters when changing orders will affect normal production.Mechanical adjustment often takes a long time, causing a loss in availability.
2. Performance
Idling, unplanned shutdowns, and deceleration will cause the machine to lose performance and fail to reach the designed rated speed.If the machinery itself breaks down, high performance will not be achieved and may even cause temporary shutdowns.
3. Quality
Focus on boot waste.Because the machine needs to pass through the paper path to achieve steady-state production, during the material change process, if the machine cannot work stably, failure will result in the production of scrap products, or the loss of good products due to inaccurate overprinting, etc.
Usually, terminal manufacturers will have a set of OEE assessment methods for field equipment to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the equipment.Therefore, for printing equipment manufacturers, basically all designs must revolve around these issues.Innovation is about solving problems for users and improving the OEE of the machine, so that customers can get a high return on investment.As competition intensifies, as an important asset, the OEE of equipment is related to the profitability of printing companies.
Whether it is stability, reliability, or ease of use, in fact, it will ultimately be attributed to the evaluation of OEE - a completely quantitative evaluation index.OEE is also one of the quantifiable indicators of digitalization in the equipment manufacturing industry.
Figure 3 Printing press using traditional mechanical long axis
Common application of electronic shaft transmission technology in equipment
In the early days, printing machinery used mechanical transmission. The long axis running through the entire machine used a worm gear mechanism to convert the rotation of the long axis into the rotation of the plate roller and traction system.The main problems with this kind of mechanical long axis are the complex mechanical structure and inconvenient maintenance. The control of the machine relies on the experience of the master. When changing orders, a lot of mechanical adjustments are required, which takes a long time.Figure 3 shows a printing press using a conventional mechanical long axis.
Users' needs are to improve delivery and reduce costs through high quality and fast order change.From the OEE calculation, we can see that these will affect the OEE indicators.Solving these problems requires technological innovation, which can be either micro-innovation or major change.
1. Innovation in transmission methods
The electronic axis is a revolution that can only be realized if the cost of servo drives and motors decreases.Servo motors have been commercialized since the 1960s, but they have not been used on a large scale because of their high price.—It was not until the application of servo systems became popular in the 1990s and the price of electronic axes gradually dropped that they were widely used in printing machinery.As shown in Figure 4, using electronic transmission can achieve higher accuracy and more flexible order replacement capabilities.
Figure 4 B&R’s integrated electronic shaft transmission system
2. Innovation of integrated color registration system
In traditional printing control, because traditional PLC cannot meet the design of advanced algorithms, usually discrete color registration needs to be implemented with a dedicated system.The integrated color registration transmits the decoupling results to the control system through the bus, and the control system can realize phase adjustment through the transmission system.The difference between the traditional discrete color registration system and the integrated color registration system is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5 The difference between discrete color registration system and integrated color registration system
B&R's PLC can support high-level language (C/C++) programming based on RTOS. Multi-variable system coupling and decoupling algorithms for color registration can be implemented on high-performance PLC without the need for a dedicated color registration system.In addition, motion control can also be directly controlled by PLC without using the traditional PLC + motion control module method. This can only be achieved with the help of a high-performance control system.
Therefore, to achieve innovation, a suitable platform is needed. New control technology can provide machines with richer functions and convenience.Modeling and simulation ensure low test verification costs and development efficiency. In addition to improving OEE, we found that the material diversity of printed materials is high.
Modeling and simulation to ensure low test verification costs and development efficiency
In addition to improving OEE, we found that the material diversity of printed matter has also been enhanced.In order to meet various scenarios, such as more exquisite book binding, high-end quality printing and hot stamping, convenient carton packaging, safer materials that meet environmental protection design and functional design are widely used, making printed materials , inks, surface treatment materials, etc. are all undergoing vastly different scene changes.The physical properties of each material are changing. These changes have an impact on the pressure, mechanical transmission, and temperature during the processing, which will lead to changes in the printing quality and production efficiency of the machine.
1. Physical modeling
In order to solve these problems, a large number of physical tests must be conducted on the machine, including the mechanical structure itself, printing materials, inks, etc., which in turn consumes a large cost.Only by testing various materials can you obtain matching parameters and the suitability of the control process.Only in this way can the machine achieve rapid adaptability of mechanical, process parameters, and transmission control parameters when changing, thereby reducing startup waste, saving process switching time, and achieving high OEE production.
In Europe and the United States, modeling and simulation is one of the key technologies for machine development, and the corresponding modeling and simulation software is also a relatively lacking part of China's manufacturing industry today.Modeling mainly uses mechanical and control modeling to obtain models of the machine's mechanical transmission and control process parameters, and then conducts virtual tests on the parameters through simulation. Only with models can virtual tests be conducted.On the other hand, this kind of test verification in the digital age includes the three-party co-simulation problem of machinery, control and process, that is, coupling several parts to obtain joint simulation, so that the interaction between machinery, control, and process can be reflected in the software. Reflect, and then be able to obtain design optimization and improvement.
Digital design must first reduce the cost of physical test verification in the test and verification process; secondly, it can obtain reusable knowledge for sustainable use of the design, that is, knowledge that exists in the form of software. This knowledge that condenses the wisdom of engineers can only be reused Only in this way can the cost be diluted.
2. Data-driven modeling
Traditional physical modeling can solve existing knowledge problems, while tacit knowledge, nonlinear, and uncertain problems can be modeled through data-driven intelligent algorithms (Data-Driven Modeling).For example, this experience is gained by learning the master's adjustment process for ink balance, and is recorded for the machine to use for judgment. The product grayscale value is obtained through machine vision, which provides a basis for judgment for printing pressure adjustment.The intelligent applications of these machines are all in the form of software that transform experience from implicit to explicit, and can be reused.
Software forms the differentiated competitiveness of machines
Digitization gives machines flexibility, and this flexibility is loaded with software. Software here serves as a container and can be applied to the packaging of Know-How.In the printing industry, control systems can give machines flexibility and help companies create differentiated competitiveness, as shown in Figure 6.It needs to be protected through various application software, which includes the following aspects:
Figure 6 Software functional design creates differentiated competitiveness
1) Process software: color mark processing, tension control, temperature control, color registration control algorithm.
2) Recipe management: including various process recipe management and recipe memory functions of the machine.
3) HMI design: easy to operate and reduces learning costs.
Figure 7 Component-based application development
4) Infrastructure management: including status monitoring of I/O and servo axes, machine status curve display, alarm trends, diagnostic maintenance, and user management, these are all basic capabilities of the machine.
Standardization and normalization
The enterprise's digital factory must actively respond to changes. The technologies used in innovative design need to be standardized, while machines need more flexible organization, and their software capabilities also need to be realized through 'high cohesion and low coupling' modules. Packaged, new machines will be quickly assembled from these software modules.B&R's mapp technology is developed based on component technology (as shown in Figure 7). Not only can new machine application systems be quickly configured, but the tension, temperature, and color scale can also be expanded from gravure to rotary offset printing and flexo printing. Tension control covers every web machine model.For printing machinery, mapp's control also includes offset printing ink curve control, pressure adjustment, data management recipe memory, quality data display, and provides more convenient mappVIEW.
Figure 8 Knowledge reuse to control other printing units
For example, the expansion from gravure printing to flexographic printing as shown in Figure 8 adopts the winding and unwinding tension control, electronic shaft transmission control, color registration algorithm, cutting electronic cam, etc. in the original gravure development.
Conclusion
For printing machinery, innovation is multi-dimensional, focusing on the following aspects:
1) The goal of innovation is to bring value to customers: Equipment manufacturers must first clearly understand their customers’ pain points, itchy points (problems that always exist but are difficult to solve), and blind spots (which cannot be seen, but can bring value enhancement).
2) Horizontal technological support: As the costs of controller technology, sensing technology, and AI computing power gradually decline, advanced machine control methods can be realized. Therefore, manufacturers must constantly pay attention to cutting-edge technologies and bring them in time. For my use.
3) Pioneering spirit and courage: Investing in technology and obtaining high returns also requires companies to have a pioneering spirit.
4) Engineering efficiency support: Improve machine development efficiency through modeling and simulation, virtual testing and verification, and software component technology.
5) Cooperation and trust: Upstream and downstream partners must trust each other and be committed to common value goals.
6) Standardization and normalization: Allow machines to be reused, improve in the continuous iteration process, and reduce costs to achieve long-term economics.
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