Project

A well-known plant engineering company develops and manufactures reliable and high-quality bottling plants since more than 50 years. The design is specifically aimed at long-time durability. In this context, remote maintenance of the world-wide installed machines via the internet got growing importance. Therefore, during development of a new bottling machine generation with a capacity of 21.000 bottles per hour, a new and Ethernet-based communication technology was required to provide remote monitoring and remote maintenance capabilities.

Solution

PROFINET was selected quickly for plant-wide communication because of its high overall performance. More time, however, was required to find a solution, how to connect the machines to PROFINET and the controller (Siemens S-300), respectively. Finally, the company decided to use a Remote-IO solution and selected the u-remote IP20 (Weidmüller). Key reasons for this decision, besides the well-proven integration to PROFINET, were comprehensive functions of the u-remote IP 20 series for diagnosis, parameterization via the built-in web interface, and space-saving configuration thanks to the extremely compact modular design.

The rotating bottling machine is equipped with 56 positions to fill one single bottle each. Therefore, each filling position has a its own controller and sensors. Here, u-remote units are used at the rotating part, whereby the sensors and control valves are directly connected to the u-remote modules. A valve island, connected to PROFINET, controls the cylinders, which clamp the bottles during the filling process. In the new machine, the input and output units of the local controllers are replaced by u-remote units, whereby a more compact and optimal „I/O-Design” is realized. Additionally, a standardized and very compact component layout is realized in the control cabinet; this is an advantage for any end-user, who wants to use a SPS from a different manufacturer. 

Conclusion

Intelligent bottling with increased reliability and security results from this new machine design. In detail: (1) The machine is able to fill bottles with a capacity varying between 0,2 and 0,75 l including in-between sizes; (2) all relevant settings can be entered at the touch-panel; (3) the machine automatically identifies broken bottles and cleans intensively the relevant location and its environment, to mention just some advantages.  

PROFINET along with the innovative u-remote IP20 technology ensures safe and efficient bottling machine operation and compliance with relevant hygienic regulations.

Weidmüller