Leading German plastic film machine manufacturer Joke GmbH found that by using a Mitsubishi Automation iQ based machine control solution to optimising their machine process they doubled throughput without a significant mechanical redesign.

The new system concept incorporating additional automation elements from Mitsubishi Electric was developed  in-house by Joke Folienschweißtechnik GmbH in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. The goal was to increase production efficiency and double throughput to keep the costs down for customers in the highly competitive cosmetics market.

For more than 40 years, Joke Folienschweißtechnik GmbH (which means foil welding technology) has been making automated systems for producing disposable PE (Polyethylene) gloves supplied on paper for handling hair dye products.

In the process the film webs are unwound together with the paper web where the sealing station forms two pairs of gloves.  After waste removal crossways cutters divided the gloves and conveyed them to an automatic folding machine for final packaging.

Double throughput

The plan was to increase productivity from 60 to 120 pairs of gloves per minute by improving the machine’s control automation, and minimise compressed air use.

The automation components needed to ensure a fast, steady feed of products in the cutting section, where after being sealed, pairs of gloves are fed to the cross-cutter at twice the normal speed.  Important here was a fault-free, safe interaction of motion sequences and other functions.

For control of the Joke FSA 504-S film-sealing system it was decided to use the Mitsubishi Electric modular iQ Platform which incorporated their Q03UDE CPU and the motion controller in a single back-plane mounting. Control was provided using Mitsubishi digital MR-J3-B-series AC servo amplifiers connected to the Motion CPU by fibre optic cabling.

The high data transmission rate of the motion CPU allows precise synchronisation and numerous multi-axis interpolation curves, and Mitsubishi HF-SP compact servo motors were used for the high dynamic applications of the conveyor belts and loading and unloading devices.

Information and operator control was provided using the GT 1275-VNBA GOT with 10.4 inch touch screen display. FR-D720S frequency inverters with have a self-diagnosis function which makes them particularly fail-safe.

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