Recently, the application of magnetic levitation flexible conveying system in some emerging manufacturing industries has been highly concerned by the industry, and some industrial control automation enterprises with strong technical strength have also launched such solutions independently developed. People’s attention to this “niche” market is growing.

In 2012, the XTS magnetic drive flexible conveying system was exhibited and quickly caused a sensation at major industrial exhibitions around the world. In 2018, Beckhoff launched the XPlanar magnetic levitation conveyor system with six degrees of freedom, and they have gradually accumulated rich practical experience in the development of flexible conveyor lines during the implementation of various specific projects. Recently, this magazine interviewed Mr. Ding Xiang, XTS/XPlanar product expert of Beckhoff Automation Co., Ltd. in Germany, and asked him to introduce Beckhoff’s development ideas and technical development trends in this technical field in detail.

Germany Beckhoff Automation Co., LTD
In recent years, flexible transmission line technology has increasingly been highly concerned by the market, Ding Xiang believes that the reasons are many, in the current wave of global manufacturing digital transformation, whether it is “Made in China 2025”, or Germany’s industry 4.0 development strategy, its goal is to fully promote intelligent manufacturing, requiring equipment to achieve flexible production; On the other hand, for more and more small-batch, multi-variety personalized processing needs, how to improve the production efficiency of the factory, such as the realization of simultaneous production or only after a simple software transformation, you can produce different batches of different specifications of products, is a common problem faced by many manufacturing enterprises. This puts forward higher demands for the intelligence and integration of the equipment. In the entire factory production process, the conveying system is an important part of it, and often becomes a bottleneck restricting the overall production efficiency, and the flexible conveying line system based on the principle of linear motor can well meet the above needs, therefore, such technical solutions are more and more applied in the current actual production equipment upgrading.

Asynchronous movement is realized by independent actuator control

Taking Beckhoff’s XTS magnetic drive flexible conveying system and XPlanar magnetic levitation conveying system as examples, Ding Xiang further analyzed: “Mechanical chain or synchronous belt transmission systems are very difficult to adapt flexibly and intelligently, because all the connected moving blocks or vehicles on these traditional transmission lines are doing synchronous motion, that is, moving the same speed and the same distance, which brings some problems: First, all operations need to wait for the slowest station to complete, before moving to the next step, can not “skip” some stations, resulting in production line speed is limited; Second, because the moving distance is the same, the layout of the station must be equal, the design of the production line is limited, and it is easy to waste resources; Third, the vehicle cannot be operated directly, but is pulled by other means, and there will be a certain loss in conveying accuracy. Our XTS magnetic drive flexible conveying system and XPlanar magnetic levitation conveying system are individually controlled, so that each actuator can be moved asynchronously, greatly improving the flexibility of the system.”

The XTS magnetic drive flexible conveying system can increase the number of working stations by adding separately controlled actuators to the slowest working station on the production line. Multiple actuators are in a group and processed simultaneously at the same working station position, which makes the processing speed of the working station double, thus breaking through the “short board” of the production line speed, and the whole production line no longer needs to wait time. Thus greatly improve the production line production rhythm.

At the same time, the unique modular design of the XTS system can form L-shaped, U-shaped, or even square production lines with different shapes by selecting arc motor modules of different radii, so that customers can design and arrange equipment production lines freely and reasonably according to the actual situation of the production site, significantly improving the integration of assembly and processing equipment. Reduce footprint to help customers save investment costs. In addition, Beckhoff’s innovative development, cable-free technology (NCT), through electromagnetic induction and wireless communication transmission between coils, realizes wireless power supply and synchronous real-time data transmission (data update cycle of 250 microseconds), without the need to connect the cable drag chain, greatly reducing the installation space. Coupled with the support of EtherCAT standard protocol, the entire system can be synchronized with microsecond accuracy, and every data in the production line processing can be directly fed back to the central control system during the transmission line operation, so that the multi-task application of the equipment has been a qualitative leap.
A complete modular XTS system consists of motor modules, rails and actuators, as well as an industrial PC with TwinCAT automation software that can be adapted to a specific device or system layout.

The XPlanar magnetic suspension conveying system is more flexible, it realizes up to six degrees of freedom of suspension product conveying, in the same plane, customers can arbitrarily splicing and laying the XPlanar plane module, the mobile integrated permanent magnet, can lift and move the load, the running XPlanar plane module generates electromagnetic field, Let the actuator move in high dynamic and high precision during the production process. The system can also run different sizes of actuators at the same time, and a variety of different products and packaging sizes can be processed on the same equipment, to achieve the purpose of maximum production line throughput in a limited production area, truly reflecting the advanced concept of flexible and intelligent manufacturing.