Products with a personal touch are not only memorable but also evoke a strong desire in consumers to own them. A growing number of manufacturers are looking to secure a share of the profits in mass customization by equipping their factories with intelligent, track-based conveyor systems. However, mass customization will only become profitable if the track system is flexible enough to quickly and economically adapt to product variations or entirely new products.
B&R's intelligent ACOPOStrak conveyor system exemplifies this. The system employs a modular structure—featuring four basic track elements and a steering mechanism—allowing for virtually any layout and easy adjustment or expansion at any time. The electromagnetically driven sliders can be independently controlled, even when positioned on either side of the steering mechanism.
The highly scalable system architecture facilitates layouts with tracks exceeding 100 meters in length and consisting of hundreds of sliders. However, “despite the complexity of the track system, it is remarkably easy to manage,” explains Robert Kickinger, Mechatronics Technology Manager at B&R. B&R has streamlined the programming process for its ACOPOStrak solutions to help machine manufacturers and production companies bring their products to market as quickly as possible. “When you minimize the amount of programming work and associated costs, you achieve an attractive return on investment,” Kickinger adds.
A collision is impossible.
Therefore, what OEMs or production line operators need is the mapp Trak system software that comes with the ACOPOStrak system. "This software is the masterpiece of our development masters," explained the mechatronics expert. They mastered the complex mathematical tasks behind ACOPOStrak's key functions, including collision avoidance, full-speed product diversion and merging, and calculating the optimal route.
Since application developers don't need to worry about these tasks, they can save valuable programming time. Collisions will not occur even if the product size and weight vary. Product dimensions can be configured manually or measured using sensors, and mapp Trak automatically adjusts the slider control to prevent collisions.
Procedural programming
Procedural programming is the second factor that significantly simplifies the programming process. With mapp Trak, application software engineers can describe the rules governing the slider's behavior on the track. These rules are activated when the slider passes a virtual trigger point. This simple state machine-based approach allows for highly efficient implementation of motion sequences. With ACOPOStrak, there's no need to program each slider's axis and motion curve individually – an extremely time-consuming task when dealing with hundreds of sliders and numerous possible routes. Another benefit of procedural programming is that no changes to the application software are required, whether detaching or attaching sliders to the track.
Application engineers can set rules for the behavior of the sliders at a given trigger point. Then, mapp Trak calculates the optimal movement for each slider.
Simulation ensures efficient operation
The simulation capabilities integrated into mapp Trak provide clear visual confirmation, ensuring smooth system operation. Developers can test the application to determine how many sliders and at what speed will provide peak productivity. “They can test many scenarios on their own commercial PCs without being limited or risky by the actual system,” says Davide Migliorisi, Project Manager for B&R Rail Systems. The software running on the computers in the developers' offices is the same system software used later on the controller. This allows for seamless switching between simulation and actual operation.
B&R's Scene Viewer tool can also be used to display how sliders interact with other mechanical components, such as machine tools, labeling machines, or robots. All you have to do is import the STEP file of the corresponding machine component and simulate its movement in space over time.
This allows developers to simulate not only the track itself, but also its interaction with other machine components. “This practical approach to the mapp Trak simulation capabilities is something our customers greatly appreciate,” Migliorisi confirmed. “This interaction with external mechanical components is quite significant,” he added, “because the ACOPOStrak carries the genes of the ACOPOS servo drive series.” The ACOPOS series features sophisticated capabilities for operating single-axis or multi-axis systems and a wide range of options for axis coupling. Therefore, using the PLCopen command, the slider can be tightly coupled to the axis driven by the ACOPOS servo drive and displayed as a digital twin in the Scene Viewer.
Highest flexibility
Customers have confirmed ACOPOStrak's ease of use. Kickinger reports that one customer used ACOPOStrak to extend the linear motor section of an existing machine, requiring only fifteen minutes of software development work before the machine was back in operation. This clearly demonstrates the advantages of ACOPOStrak's hardware-independent programming concept.
ACOPOStrak's distributed software architecture makes it very easy to expand the system with new track segments.
Through the mapp Trak system software, product data can be clearly linked to the slider corresponding to the product. "This gives you the highest level of flexibility," Kickinger said. For example, data records for a specific product on a pharmaceutical production line can include the exact composition of the active ingredient and a unique product ID. The date and time each product passes through each processing station can also be stored. This allows application engineers to easily achieve FDA-compliant product traceability.
Complexity is easy to manage
Mapp Trak guarantees three things: the sliders will not collide, they will not traverse virtual obstacles, and they will adhere to configurable speed limits. With these guarantees, ease of programming, and integrated simulation, B&R makes the flexible ACOPOStrak conveyor system extremely user-friendly. This also enables rapid and economical production of new products in any batch. This is a crucial aspect for winning new production orders in a short time.
The simulation behaves exactly like the real ACOPOStrak system, which greatly accelerates the development of new machines.
mapp Trak is based on a four-layer architecture, which makes programming motion sequences as easy as possible.
mapp Trak architecture
ACOPOStrak's software architecture is divided into four basic layers. The bottom layer is the track segment control layer, which controls the movement of sliders located on the corresponding track segments. The layer above it is the slider control layer, which calculates things like the slider's setpoint. This occurs at this layer if application engineers want to connect a slider to an external axis or another slider, for example, using a PLC function block. This is also the layer that handles unloading and loading sliders from the track—for example, when ACOPOStrak is used in conjunction with a traditional conveyor belt or when sliders are unloaded and loaded by personnel or robots. The third layer of software elements is logistics control, which provides automated route selection from one processing station to another. The fourth layer is dedicated to process control. This layer is also the programming interface for software engineers to describe the process flow.
