B&R’s Packer, displayed at last month’s PPMA show, integrates the latest machine concepts for handling, image processing, safety technology, control and monitoring. Three different robots – an articulated arm robot, a tripod robot and a Cartesian coordinate robot – with completely different kinematic characteristics are synchronised along a rotary table to pick up and package golf balls transported along the table’s perimeter.
The complete system, which includes 15 axes as well as the process control and visualisation, is operated using a single CPU, in this case an industrial PC. The different kinematics exhibited by the three robots are also seamlessly integrated into the controller, with the open interface making it possible to implement any type of customer-specific kinematics. With its flexible interpreter, either standard commands can be used to program different sequences, or user-defined commands can be created that are more relevant to the process at hand. This is one way to reduce time needed to create the sequence program for the handling system.
