Mechatronic Laminating Machine

Drives and Automation provided design, manufacture, software development and commissioning in Denmark for replacement electrical controls of a corrugated card laminating line, manufacturing high quality packaging materials.

Printed laminate card was automatically glued at 120m/min to preformed single face corrugated card stock. The continuous roll of now laminated feed was cut to the final size utilising a rotary shear to an accuracy of better than 2mm in 1000mm. The flying shear was DC driven and the feed of the laminate to the corrugated card was achieved utilising servo control. The laminate sheets were held at rest and accelerated to line speed to ensure correct alignment with the mother sheet was achieved.

A series of individually driven vacuum belts and pinch rolls further treated the material to dry and manipulate the sheets ready for automatically stacking on a choice of 2 stacking machines.

A total of 14 individual drives were locked together via a master line speed reference to achieve the required product specification.

The drives were Eurotherm AC and DC operating in closed loop and flux vector control as appropriate.

Automatic control and line speed referencing was generated within a Siemens Step 7 PLC system. Full backup support was provided in Denmark during the early stages of production, which was achieved on time and to spec.