Lamination Controller

Case Studies

July 6, 2016

This customer is into the production of laminating machines for the different production house and advertisement industries. The customer had a cold-pressed lamination model, which ran on simple relays and contactor logic. The customer wants to upgrade to the hot roller lamination model, with a more sophisticated control and display. The customer approached Gauranga for the design and development of the microcontroller-based solution, which can run the machine and precisely control the temperature of rollers.

The Requirement

The customer wants to microcontroller-based solution, which will eliminate the relays and contractor logic, and offer a touch screen display to the user. This involves precise temperature controlling of two sets of rollers, with PID algorithm, motor control operations for the laminations, interfacing other safety sensors such as laser for hand detection, etc. Temperature measurement of the roller should be contactless IR sensing. The customer also wants to have different statistical data on the touch screen and has different configuration settings.

The solution

  • Gauranga opted for a 32bit PIC controller for managing the different IO operations and maintaining the temperature etc.

  • Gauranga selected a contactless Thermopile sensor for temperature measurement of the rollers.

  • Implemented laser sensor for hand safety.

  • Used triac modules for AC power control of the heating rods inside the rollers.

  • Used solid-state relays for the operation of various hydraulic pumps and motors.

  • Used stepper driver for the control of roller movements.

Challenges Overcome

  • Remote sensing of temperature is a cost-effective and accurate way, to measure the roller temperature.

  • Temperature control using PID loop for the roller temperature

  • UI design and development

  • UI design and development

  • Firmware integration of all the sections and seamless operation of the system.

Results Observed

The system could able to achieve precise temperature measurement and control of the roller. Customer could successfully integrate the hardware into his machine and arrive at the desired products for his end customers.