automotion automotion automotion automotion - B&R Industrie ...

only solved this problem and took
a big step forward; we also eliminated
any conceivable performance
bottlenecks."
the FeRAg expert is referring in part
to the continuously increasing turnout
of the rotary printing machines
prevalent in the printing industry,
which the subsequent print finishing
machines must then keep up with.
Rotary printing machines are used
primarily to produce newspapers,
magazines, catalogs, flyers, books
and other printed materials in middle
and high quantities.
more complex products, such as
phonebooks, are composed of numerous
different signatures. these
are usually produced one after another
on a single rotary printer. Finished
signatures must therefore be
stored intermediately.
print shops that specialize in job
printing, such as advertising brochures
and other occasional printed
materials, also often need to store
their products temporarily. this is
the case, for example, for advertising
materials that accompany newspapers
and are printed in advance.
In these and similar cases, it has
proven effective to store the printed
materials in the form of "logs". this
is where the multiLog from FeRAg
comes into play. It receives the
folded and creased signatures from
the rotary printer and stacks them in
logs, which can contain thousands
of signatures. One unique feature
of the log former from FeRAg is the
large, covered format area (190 x 135
mm up to 500 x 320 mm); another is
The new MultiLog can handle up to 120,000 copies per hour.
the loose structure of the logs. this
prevents loops from forming and
the ink from smearing, which would
reduce the quality of the end product,
or even result in a misprint. the
gentler handling of the paper also allows
thinner print items with as few
as 8 pages to be processed.
POWERLINK replaces CAN
the challenge is not only that paper
can vary greatly in composition and
thickness and that signatures can
contain different amounts of air,
which makes handling more difficult,
but also that modern high-performance
rotary printers with which
the multiLog is used have such a
high processing speed.
the rotary printers used in job printing
have typically printed between
60,000 and 70,000 copies per hour.
"Recently, however, we had the first
case where the printer was designed
for 120,000 copies per hour," reports
the FeRAg electrical engineering
department manager.
"the processing speed
With POWERLINK communication,
the MultiLog is capable
of achieving even the
highest processing speeds.
Application
this requires would have brought
our previous architecture, with one
CAN bus driving the machine's six
servo axes and a second to connect
the I/Os and frequency inverter, to
its limits." When planning the modernization,
FeRAg therefore was
looking for an alternative to the CAN
bus that had already established
itself, yet had sufficient reserves to
handle existing and future developments.
"the decision came down
to pOWeRLINK and etherCAt," explains
the FeRAg manager. A third
product from a well-known automation
manufacturer had been eliminated
from the decision early on
due to technical reasons. multiple
factors contributed to the final decision
in favor of pOWeRLINK, as the
FeRAg manager summarizes: "We
decided for pOWeRLINK, because
of our previous positive experiences
with B&R products. In the end, the
deciding factors were the integrated
and reliable safety technology."
Flexibility through integrated
safety
As a beta user, FeRAg was one of
the first companies to benefit from
the advantages of B&R's integrated
safety technology: "the cabling is
considerably easier, and we saved
space on the mounting rail, compared
to the traditional solution with
contactors and e-stop circuits or a
separate safety controller," praise
the software developers from >>
automotion 07/2009
35