Background

Whether a customer wants to produce a filling for a bonbon, doublewafer or cake roll with different layers; the filling should always be appliedquickly and precisely. Haas-Mondomix in Almere, The Netherlands, builds‘high-speed depositor machines for this purpose. Customers includeindustrial bakeries and sweets manufacturers that desire higherproductivity and constant quality.

During the past year Haas Mondomix has experienced enormousdevelopment in this area. The company, which is part of the Austrian‘Franz Haas Waffel- und Keksanlagen-Industrie’ group from Vienna, has asound reputation in the construction of ‘aerators’ with complete processlines for the production of creams and fillings.

Solutions• High Speed Depositor, capable to fill

on the chocolate moulds 120 times aminute

• Spraying products in complicatedshapes on the fly onto a conveyorbelt

• Kinetix Servo control, which is fastand precise, and offers ease of use forthe engineering and maintenance

• Synchrononising all movements ofthe spray-block PLC platform RSLogix5000 as base

Results• Huge amounts of time saved

• Software reuse

• Scalability, from simple to verycomplex

Haas-Mondomix uses single control platformin its High Speed Depositor machinesMachine builder adopts a Rockwell Automation platform for speedand accuracy while maintaining existing software configurations

Challenge

Aeration is the terminology used in the baking industrywhich refers to beating air into a cream or fatty mass - thesame one would use a mixer to make whipped cream.

The next important step that Haas Mondomix tookrecently was to develop machines that deposit fillingsonto a mould, e.g. a biscuit or bonbon. On theinternational market these machines are referred to asdepositors. Haas Mondomix introduced its first XYZdepositor on the market in 2008, and now also suppliesthe High Speed Depositors, which has become a verysuccessful part of its product range. The marketresponded positively to this development, and as a resultthe company has increasingly focused its efforts on theproduction of ‘depositors’, in addition to aerators.

The depositors vital components include a pump totransport the filling and a spray beam with a variablenumber of nozzles to apply the filling. To make sure thatall the spray beams movements occur precisely andsynchronously with the pump's actions, the engineers atHaas Mondomix adopted the RSLogix control platformfrom Rockwell Automation.

John Bruins, System Developer at Haas-Mondomixexplained the reasons for this choice. “The criteria for theengineering components of our machines are based onsimplicity, saving time and reusing software. That is why

we chose Rockwell Automation. Important factors alsotaken into consideration were the demand andacceptation from the market, and the technicalrequirement in using the Rockwell Automation controlplatform solution. Other motion suppliers in the market,have their own PLC and a separate motion platform.Rockwell Automation however, uses one single controlplatform to operate the machine to perform the motiontasks.

“The motion controller is integrated in the CPU, the mainadvantages here, being the easy to programmeconditions. The linear movement is nothing more than ablock in the Process Automation Controller (PAC)programme. The motion tasks are programmed from thesame RSLogix™ 500 control platform, thus creatinguniformity throughout. This is also important for us assome of our employees are not technically trained so It Isimperative they understand the process. Our mechanicsare also familiar on working with Allen-Bradley machinecontrols from Rockwell Automation. They understand theAllen-Bradley® ControlLogix® PACs which are usedtogether with the Allen-Bradley® Kinetix® 6000 motioncontrol in the High Speed Depositor. The static modelincludes a smaller CompactLogix controller which iscombined with the same Kinetix 6000 motion control. Thismeans the same software is used during installation andmaintenance.”

The challenge in developing the High Speed Depositorwas to create a machine that could process the fillingonto the chocolate moulds 120 times a minute. Thisoccurs on a conveyor belt where six rows of 20chocolates pass per minute. This needs to be doneaccurately and without air bubbles to producebeautifully filled chocolate.

“Our design was based on the tri-axial simple depositor.This provided the basis for the HSD," says Bruins. "Wewere able to copy parts of the old programming ontothe new system, which was very handy. It saved us ahuge amount of time. This is very similar to object-oriented programming; 90% of the programme partsare objects. This means the software for the smallmachine is practically the same as for that of the bigmodel; only the parameters are different."

Solution

Bruins continues "Our solution for the High SpeedDepositor is an Allen-Bradley Servo Control, which isfast and precise, and offers ease-of-use for engineeringand maintenance aspects. It is also scalable; fromsimple to very complex. All the controls for the newmachine were built with minor adjustments to thesoftware. Our engineer's work primarily consisted ofconfiguring the software, instead of actualprogramming it - a significant time saver. The finalresult is a High Speed Depositor, which works bothstatically and dynamically, with various capacities. Thesoftware’s broad applicability means that we cansupply the right machines to our customers, adapted tomeet their specific needs, as well as maintaining a fast,user-friendly machine."

Results

“It might sound strange but our end users are ultimatelynot interested in the installed components in themachine. They mainly look at production capacity andoverall quality of the final product. To most end users, theprocesses that occur within the machine are of littleinterest to them. However, as machine builders, we needto look at it from a different perspective. To us the keyaspects are – efficiency, ease of engineering, the ability toreuse software, uniformity and scalability,” explains Bruins

The High Speed Depositor produces spray products incomplicated shapes that are sprayed onto the 'fly' of aconveyor belt. This is done by an Allen-Bradley Servo-driven pump that makes sure the products all have thesame constant shape. The spray head which houses thedifferent nozzles only needs to make an X and Zmovement.

Because this requires a movement of 44mm in 0.1 secondswith a weight of 250 kgs, Haas-Mondomix chose to equipthe machine with an Allen-Bradley double Servo Motor tocreate both movements. The Servo Motors are fitted onboth ends of the spray beam that provide fast movementsynchronously and with utmost precision.

Additional Information

www.rockwellautomation.com

The results mentioned above are specific to Haas-Mondomix's use of Rockwell Automation products and services inconjunction with other products. Specific results may vary for other customers.

Listen. Think. Solve., Allen-Bradley, RSLogix, ControlLogix and Kinetix are trademarks of Rockwell Automation, Inc. Trademarks not belonging to Rockwell Automation are property of their respective companies.

Publication OEM-AP121A-EN-P – January 2010 – Expiry date: January 2012 Copyright © 2010 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the UK.