Rockwell: Intelligent track motion system offers downtime reduction

iTRAK technology enables independent control of multiple magnetically propelled movers on straight and curved paths.

It was developed by Jacobs Automation, who Rockwell purchased last year.  

Pouching potential​

Matt Wiese, field support engineer, motion solutions group of iTRAK, told FoodProductionDaily.com it could be used for food handling such as pouching and flow wrappers.  

“For example in pouching, where you are changing over from a different bag, a lot of our smaller end-users want the flexibility to pack different sizes, maybe a lot of different types of products in their pouches,” ​he said during Emballage 2014. ​

“You are able to have the changeover significantly dropped as all it is is changing two things, the program which is pushing a button on your HMI and changing whatever your wrapper that you want to put in is.​

“We’ve gone from downtime of seven or eight hours to changeover, now they’ve dropped to about an hour. Just change what you’re going to put in, what wrapper you’re going to feed and what program you want to run – it is that simple.”    ​

Linear motion​

Wiese said the linear motion solution allows independent control of multiple movers.

“We have the ability to have something called Smart Curves which is the addition and differentiator from traditional linear solutions. Basically what this allows us to do is to have control around things such as acceleration and movement on the corners are relatively made simple now,” ​he said.

“The system works with Studio 5000, where we do the primary programming. ​Customers who are ​traditionally used to programming rotary axes using Kinetix Motion Control ​don’t ​have to change to a third party programming software."​

Applications include case packaging or any process that requires changing from an asynchronous to a synchronous motion.

Customers can collate any number of items before packaging, and move them as a group all the way through the process, said Wiese.

“You can change the pitch between movers at any time, so you do not have to change belts or chains​. So the machine length actually shrinks considerably because you are able to independently control every movement,” ​he said. ​

"A common application is pouching, with two independently controlled movers applied to each pouch.  Then you are able to change the pitch independently through your process - opening, venting, filling, closing, sealing, and extracting​​