It's no secret that most every manufacturer today is under the gun to get products to market faster, run their operations more efficiently, and react quicker to market shifts. If you make packaging equipment, that means your packaging line must respond in kind with machines that are fast, flexible, and reliable.

These pressures have put packaging-equipment manufacturers in a bind. Their traditional vendors tend to focus on components (I/O blocks, photoeyes, servo drives, for instance) that might address one of these issues, but not all of them. With its Integrated Architecture, Rockwell Automation is taking a system-wide approach that focuses on the entire application, and its relation to other plant-floor activities, and less on the individual parts.

Integrated Architecture focuses on the integration of control, communications, and visualization through the Logix engine, NetLinx open networks architecture, and ViewAnyWare visualization. This provides packaging OEMs and end users with several exclusive features and benefits. Here's a closer look.

Single platform for motion and machine control. Most packaging applications require a mixture of motion and sequential control. Each has different requirements. For instance, sequential applications consist of fast (millisecond) Boolean logic solving, whereas motion requires computation intensive, floating-point math as well as the need to interpolate position data and velocity.

Integrated Architecture uses the Logix platform for horizontal integration across sequential, motion, process, and drives control. All Logix controllers use a common control engine. Contrast this with traditional packaging systems that employ a dedicated controller for logic and I/O control, and a second for motion control. These controllers must be linked together using hardwiring, serial interface or some other means of communication — information is not available in real time. Naturally, this makes synchronizing and programming the system protracted and difficult. Separate application programs must be written for each controller, each with a unique programming package and language. The result is an application that is difficult to operate and maintain, exhibits inadequate reliability, and may not meet performance requirements under a variety of conditions.

Synchronizing information exchange between two independent controllers also exhausts up to 25% of program logic in each device. The amount of time it takes a data packet to travel from one processor, over the wire, to the next and through a conversion program negatively impacts accuracy. Consequently, motion and sequential control can get far enough out of sync to impact machine performance.

The Logix (both ControlLogix and SoftLogix5800) approach has several advantages. First, motion instructions residing in the processor can be used without motion cards or separate programming software. Also, interlocking motion and logic takes place in the processor for critical tasks, eliminating the need to interlock multiple motion trajectories among several motion cards across a backplane.

In addition, the ControlLogix controller now takes advantage of SERCOS high-speed digital-drive communications. It uses synchronous, distributed processing, allowing high-level motion functions to execute directly on the controller. Dedicated DSP-based motion modules perform high-speed, low-level, motion loop closure. ControlLogix executes all motion commands and trajectory planning functions. The controller can handle up to 32 axes of motion. Thirty-two embedded commands support a range of motion functions from simple point-to-point moves to more complex ratioing, position-cam, and time-cam moves.

Integrated Architecture ties all control functionality into a single, multi-tasking controller platform. This results in higher system performance, faster application development, easier maintenance, and lower overall cost. Packaging performance is enhanced because all system-control elements not only reside on the same hardware chassis, but within the same multi-processor-control architecture. The result is real-time communication and data manipulation for motion control, which yields greater precision and boosts throughput.

Implementing motion control with Logix eliminates multiple programming languages and software packages. Both sequential and motion control execute on a single ControlLogix or SoftLogix platform.