Vision system, motion control help assemble toilet seats. (Online).(Brief Article)

Control Engineering, November, 2001

To help keep up with increasing commode production, systems integrator Phoenix Automation (Norcross, Ga.) recently built an automated machine that assembles up to 24,000 toilet seats every 10 hours, or 40 seats per minute. This sequential operation requires two indexing pallet conveyors. Placing bumpers into predrilled holes molded into the covers and seats required integrating vision with motion control.

The entire system has 23 servo-controlled drives, two vision systems, nine 16-valve air banks, more than 300 photocell and proximity sensor inputs, and four Siemens human-machine interfaces (HMIs), controlled by a Siemens PLC and communicating via Profibus. The Phoenix engineering team reviewed several companies' vision systems and chose Siemens VS710 vision...

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