Nowadays, for the manufacturing industry, it needs to develop towards the intelligence, like, 3C electronics, PCB, food packaging, medicine, cosmetics and automotive parts, etc., then in these fields, especially for tiny materials, there is no doubt they are undergoing a transformation in production mode.
Like, for loading by traditional mechanical vibration disk / single placing / single labeling, they can’t meet high-precision, high-efficiency, and soft production needs of current market.
In a word, now industry trends to “multi-type & small-bulk customized” production mode from former “single-type with a large amount” mode.
Today, we mainly talk about “vision fly-shooting loading & unloading with multi-nozzle” solution.
Technology Brief Introduction of “Multi-Nozzle” Vision Fly-Shooting Loading & Unloading”
Firstly, put materials in the flexible vibration disk, and spread it out through vibration. Then, roughly recognize, match, and generate OK material coordinates by the third-party vision. At the same time, the machine runs to OK coordinates synchronously, sucking materials through multi-nozzle. Next, in the process of placing material at material disk, it will do vision fly-shooting to achieve position correction. At last, materials are put into material disk.
Sometimes, the loading & unloading system needs to process complex material types, such as, it includes packaging materials with smart labels such as QR codes, barcodes, anti-counterfeiting codes, as well as various types of precision electronic components and micro hardware accessories. Obviously, these kinds of materials need high vision recognition precision, mechanical positioning accuracy, and software flexibility.
*common loading & unloading materials*
Generally, when picking and placing the material, there will be small position offset by manipulator gripper / suction disk, then causing whole placing precision. In order to avoid this problem, an industrial camera is usually used to capture the position of the material being grabbed or sucked during the movement of the workpiece, and to perform position correction.
If without vision fly-shooting, solution of “IPC + machine vision + PLC + touch screen” is used. And it only can shoot when it stops at fixed position to do position correction, that is, it needs to stop for shooting, then moves again after shot. In this way, waiting time is more obviously, which not only reduces loading & unloading technology efficiency, also affects the capacity.
*device V/T of traditional fixed position shooting*
According to traditional solution situation, Zmotion develops one super-high-speed PCIe EtherCAT motion control card PCIE464M to do multi-nozzle vision loading & unloading solution.
Specifically, when it moves to preset shooting area, motion control card itself high-speed IO port can precisely trigger the industrial camera to execute multi-position fly-shooting. At the same time, combining with the third-party vision, it can capture graphics parallelly and recognize features for multi-nozzle station in a short time, as well as feedback the real-time pixel level positioning data to motion controller.
Zmotion multi-nozzle fly-shooting loading & unloading solution can complete multi-axis position compensation and angle correction synchronously, high-speed continuous fly-shooting can be achieved, which can promote more 12% comprehensive efficiency than traditional fixed shooting.
*device V/T of Zmotion fly-shooting*
1. What is Zmotion PCIE464M Motion Control Card Vision Loading & Unloading Solution
(1) Solution Whole Design
[16 DI]: connect to sensors (origin, position limit), switch signals, encoders.
[16DO]: (high-speed outputs) connect to industrial camera’s hard trigger input and dispensing valve.
[EtherCAT]: connect to EtherCAT drives for controlling other axes motion, connect to EtherCAT IO modules to expand more resources. EtherCAT period can be up to 125us.
[8 Single-Ended Pulse Output]: connect to pulse drives
[RS232]: connect to light source controller
[EtherNET]: it is Gigabit ethernet, connecting to area scan camera with Gige protocol for vision positioning, correction.
(2) Solution Hardware Configuration
PCIE464M Card Video Introduction: https://youtu.be/RKA8ijcndQc
6-64 axes motion control to control EtherCAT / pulse / stepper servo drives.
Linkage axes can be up to 16 axes.
Min control period is 125us.
There are 16 digital inputs and 16 outputs: 4 are high-speed latch inputs, 4 are high-speed PWM, 12 are high-speed camera triggering “PSO”, specifically, it supports PWM outputs, 1D / 2D / 3D hardware position comparison outputs, vision fly-shooting, continuous interpolation, etc.
It can save and interrupt when power off, the program can be protected well by several encryptions.
Achieve higher precision because it has 1D / 2D helical compensation.
8 single-ended pulse axes + 4 single-ended encoder axes
+30 robotic models are supported, including SCARA, Delta, UVW, and 4-axis/5-axis RTCP, etc.
Achieve Multi-Axis Synchronous Control & High-Speed High-Precision Motion Control under “PC + Motion Control Card” mode!
2. How to Achieve Loading & Unloading of Zmotion Solution
PCIE464M motion control card sends commands to EtherCAT drives, then motors will execute corresponding motion control tasks. Then, the system will feedback the motor real-time position (MPOS) through encoder / grating ruler. And the precision position control can be realized by our powerful motion control algorithm. During the motion, trigger the camera to shoot at precise target position, even in high-speed motion, image acquisition precision and consistency can be ensured.
Therefore, it can realize precision positioning under high-speed fly-shooting.
(1) Solution Whole Process
(2) Solution Specific Actions
[Step 1: Material Disk Vision Positioning]
The camera takes the picture for materials in vibration disk to do rough positioning, then calculate position coordinates and planning path of capturing through vision.
[Step 2: Loading Capturing]
According to calculated position, motion axis’ suction moves to correct position, then multiple nozzles to suck and capture materials.
[Step 3: Bottom Camera Multi-Position Vision Fly-Shooting]
Captured material moves to shooting area of bottom camera, then, the camera will be triggered by motion control card inner precision output / hardware position comparison output (HW) to do vision fly-shooting.
[Step 4: Multi-Position Positioning & Correction]
Use the third-party vision to do vision analysis for shot graphic, and correct the position.
[Step 5: Unloading & Placing]
While moving to placing position, correct angle and position, after arrived correct position, place materials.
[Step 6: Next Capturing]
When placed, return to loading position and ready to next capture.
3. Why Choose Zmotion Loading & Unloading Solution
a. High Compatibility
It supports all kinds of operation systems, WindowsXP / 7 / 10 / 11, Linux.
b. Easy to Develop
It supports general API function interface, easy and flexible to program.
c. Faster Efficiency
PCIe interface is faster than PCI to transfer data, suit to high-speed & high-precision applications.
There are 12 independent hardware position comparison output, which can achieve fly-shooting at multi-point multi-position, that is, the whole production efficiency can be promoted above 10%.
d . C onvenient Wiring
There are 16 digital inputs and 16 digital outputs, no need of adaptor board.
e. Higher Execution Efficiency
It not only can develop by PC host computer languages (C# / C++ / LabVIEW / Python, etc.), also these languages can be used together with our BASIC language, which promotes command’s real-time execution efficiency.
f. Higher Device Capacity
The motion control card’s EtherCAT synchronous period achieves 125us.
g. Lower Machine CT
In the process of machine vision positioning correction, use fly-shooting technology, which can reduce machine CT.
h. Higher Precision
There is real test that shows the loading & unloading precision can be up to ±0.02mm.