Textiles Riveting Task Automated

What we did:

We aimed to combine the durable manufacturing of Carr Group industrial machinery with the Allen-Bradley Micro 820 Programmable Logic Control from Rockwell Automation.

• The Micro 820 Programmable Logic Controller System is ideal for small standalone machine control and remote automation applications.

Fitzwilliam Electrical’s team meticulously set about wiring up the Carr Group machine which unrolls and re-rolls textile materials whilst punching in eyelets at distances set via a control switch. 

• The distance between eyelets is measured using an incremental encoder to the nearest millimetre  This is an electromechanical device that produces digital pulses in response to mechanical displacement.
• The pace of the material rollout is controlled by a DC servo drive for precision accuracy.
• The material roll is first attached at the non-drive end and set in place via a pneumatic arm. The edge is then set across the table and attached to the driven roller.
• Once the material is jogged manually into position and the pitch is chosen, it can then be set to auto mode and the settings continued until the entire roll is complete.

How it helped:

Our solution dramatically increases the client’s productivity and reduces labour costs.  A task that originally took two people half a day to complete, could now be completed in 15 minutes with our automated industrial machine.