Siemens Aktiengesellschaft

Curd Weber

Jochen Bretschneider

Steffen Mihatsch

Klaus Hertinger

Peter Bauer

Tom Tolkmitt

Jörg Handeck

Horst Stiehler

Steffen Schmauder

Heino De Levie

A control device of a production machine receives a present path and a movement command from an operator during manual operation of the production machine. An element of the production machine should be moved along the present path by means of position-controlled axes. Based on the movement command, a series of position setpoint values having a setpoint velocity is determined for the axes. The control device determines from the position setpoint values and corresponding position actual values control commands for the drives driving the axes and controls the drives accordingly. The determined control commands limit a contact force (F), which the at least one element exerts on its environment, to a force limit value (F) specified to the control device. The control device monitors a following error of the drives and suppresses further movement of the element when the following error reaches a maximum value.

Force-limited movement of at least one element of a production machine in manual operation

Movable elements of a machine are moved by a control device of the machine by controlling drives of the machine. To monitor the movement of the movable elements for collision with each other or with a stationary element, two monitoring devices check, independently from each other, using a computer program, whether there is a risk of collision in the working space. Depending on whether the monitoring devices detect a risk of collision or not, they intervene, independently from each other, in a corrective manner, in the control of the drives or not, and/or independently emit an alarm message or not. The two computer programs are designed in a diverse manner. The two monitoring devices differ from one another. One monitoring device is identical to the control device, while the other monitoring device is embodied as an industrial PC with a data link to the control device.

Redundant, diverse collision monitoring

A method for controlling several master axes in a machine, for example a production machine includes the steps of defining profiles of desired values for a plurality of master axes, determining for each master axis a current desired value and also a current desired value for a slave axis using a logic combination rule, controlling a first drive in accordance with the current desired value of the slave axis, and if the dynamics controlling the first drive exceeds an upper dynamics limit, starting at the next clock pulse to modify determination of the current desired values for at least one of the master axes, and controlling the first drive with a reduced dynamics until the reduced dynamics falls below a lower dynamics limit.

Controlling a slave drive with dynamic determination of the dynamics of the master axis

Growing community of inventors

Sulzfeld, Germany

Curd Weber