Rockwell Automation offers a wide range of automation and software products designed to utilize complex data and the volume of production data. These flexible manufacturing solutions also include the independent cart technologies (ICT) iTrak and MagneMotion. They are already being used in numerous modern machine concepts - including in the consumer goods, food and pharmaceutical industries.

Applications using iTrak technology - including consumer goods packaging, medical analyzers and fillers - have demonstrated the performance of ICT not only in terms of flexibility, but also in terms of higher throughput, lower energy costs, smaller footprint and shorter time-to-market. In numerous applications, changeover times have been reduced by 90 percent, throughputs increased by 100 percent and space requirements reduced by 50 percent.

Flexible customization as required

In many companies, ICT is just the starting point and is adapted to their own applications. One example of this is the Danish company Mach-Tech. It integrates the power, network and air supply directly into the conveyor trolleys - regardless of their position or orientation on the guide rail.

A machine that the company has developed for a leading pharmaceutical customer is being designed in a pilot project to enable the most effective timing and flow of production for a medical device. Niels Jørgen Hansen, Managing Director of Mach-Tech, says: "The customer currently uses several different assembly processes, all of which have different processing times. With the iTrak system and its autonomous conveyor trolleys, we can coordinate these processing times with conveyor trolleys to balance the impact of longer dwell times on the overall production cycle. Simply put, we only need to increase the number of stations for the slowest process."

"The big advantage of iTrak is that we can change the production flow on the fly," explains Hansen. "In the product design phase, customers often don't know the exact production parameters and processing times, but thanks to the flexibility of iTrak, it is much easier to change and test all parameters until an optimal production flow is defined. The machine that assembles the product today is a rotary indexing table with a throughput of around 30 products per minute. Although the iTrak-based solution delivers the same throughput, a major problem with rotary indexing tables is that they cannot compensate for longer and variable processing times. You cannot simply add new stations or change production steps. In the future, you could even replace two machines by adding different processing stations without affecting throughput."

Machine variants in various combinations

Adjustments to product throughput and process flexibility are offered by both of Rockwell's ICT technologies, but what makes this development really interesting is the ability to add Mach-Tech's data, power and air connections to the trolleys. "We have modified the trolleys and rails to offer machine variants with different combinations: six bar air pressure, vacuum, product ejection and actuators; Ethernet for two-way communication and control data; and power, in this case 2A per mover for heating."

"On the older machine with a rotary indexing table," says Hansen, "the stations were supplied with power and air via a central carousel. However, we had not yet developed this for a non-circular format - in this case a rectangle. That's why we adapted the carousel technology with the help of spring tensioners so that the supply lines were always kept tight across all radii to prevent fluttering during fast movements."

"We have also adapted the track and integrated three copper rails that supply the power," continues Hansen. "No one has ever done this before. It was a challenge to get around the bends, but apart from that, the power supply was easy. The central carousel, which was responsible for the air supply and communication, was more of a challenge. In the end, we settled on a single supply hose that transports both power and air and is split again at the conveyor carriage. With this arrangement, we only have to run a single hose per trolley. The beauty of this approach is that we can also install a 24 VDC line if a busbar-based solution is not required."

The development is being expanded

"Naturally, the engineers at Rockwell Automation were very interested in this technology, as this approach was completely new to them," explains Hansen. "The conveyor carts or movers are simply adaptations of the existing design and we were able to use the pin holes and screws to build our application on top of them." Thanks to the power and functionality of iTrak, the system can easily move these changes in relation to the additional inertia created by the new hardware. "We ran several tests with different loads," Hansen explains, "including analog devices, I/O. We put all sorts of things on the movers and found no inertia problems. We are now building on these developments in a machine for another customer who also uses iTrak, but without curves. The trolleys simply move back and forth on a 5 to 6 m long track and replace or compensate for a linear production process."

"The technology we have developed is available in several variants," concludes Hansen, "with different combinations of power, network and air - depending on the specific application. We offer it as a solution for both machine builders and manufacturers, whether for a new application or an existing system. In this way, we can help customers who are looking for new systems or who want to modernize what they already have."

ICT is part of Rockwell Automation's Integrated Architecture, which is complemented by the connectivity of the Connected Enterprise. With ICT and all the flexibility it offers, decisions can be made based on operational data, feedback can be obtained and necessary changes can be implemented quickly and efficiently - something that is not easily possible with conventional systems. In this way, ICT allows the flexibility demanded by the market in the context of near real-time production. Hybrid versions such as the solution developed by Mach-Tech take adaptability and flexibility to a new level.

Lothar Fischer is Solution Architect at Rockwell Automation /am