Beyer Maschinenbau is a well-known and respected plant manufacturer in the beverage industry. The company supplied a multifunctional palletising system for the Sachsenobst winery. It is equipped with drive and control technology from SEW-Eurodrive, which handles demanding motion control and drive tasks.
Juices and fruit wines pressed directly from the juice of freshly harvested fruit are particularly delicious. Between Grimma and Döbeln, between Oschatz and Colditz, magnificent fruit ripens in large quantities. In the middle of this fertile region, a fruit orchard was established in 1936 just outside the town of Döbeln. Sweet must and fruit wine pressing was built. It is the origin of today's Kelterei Sachsenobst GmbH.
Efficient bottle handling
Since 1990, this wine press house has been a subsidiary of the Obstland AG Dürrweitzschen. From 1997 to 2000, it was extensively reconstructed and modernised in line with the parent company's philosophy of offering liquid and solid fruit from a single source. Investments totalling more than 11 million euros turned the once small family cidery into one of the world's leading cider producers. most modern wineries in Saxony grow. This modernisation involved the Beyer Maschinenbau GmbH considerable share. This was based both on the high technological level of the company and on decades of good cooperation.
Back in the 1980s, the company developed Dieter Beyer, father of the current Managing Director, Till Beyer, installed a handling system for the hot-filled bottles to reduce the workload of the wine press employees. „Fruit juices are filled to the brim at 90 °C, fruit wines at 60 °C,“ explains Production Manager Luise Hoppe. „They are then cooled down to around 35 °C so that the flavour and vitamins are preserved.“
With the modernisation in the years from 1997, all systems and transport facilities were equipped with Drives from SEW-Eurodrive SEW provided us with gear units, motors, inverters and control systems from a single source. This was a great advantage for the increasingly sophisticated systems,„ explains Till Beyer.„Another advantage is the territorial proximity and the commitment of SEW-Eurodrive's Drive Technology Centre (DTC) in Meerane,“ adds Johannes Zimmermann, Technical manager of the Sachsenobst winery.
Investment in new palletising system
13 August 2002 went down in the history of the Sachsenobst winery as „Black Tuesday“. The „flood of the century“ of the Freiberger Mulde flooded all the buildings and the entire bottling technology was destroyed. The next flood came in 2013. Extensive renovation of important plant components was then necessary. Among other things, the investment for a Multifunctional palletising system advertised.
„Out of seven companies, only Beyer Maschinenbau submitted an offer that met our specifications in terms of time and technology,“ emphasises Johannes Zimmermann out. „Our requirements were ambitious: the system to be set up takes over the entire conveying and handling processes for the incoming empties, the pallets and the handling of the crates with the returnable bottles, as well as the cartons with the non-returnable bottles. We couldn't provide much space for this.“
A space of 150 m2 with a height of 6.50 m was available at the front of the filling hall. The palletising system was therefore installed on two levels. In addition, an automatic new glass pusher had to be installed in this limited space. The system can transport a total of 8,000 1.0-litre bottles per hour.
Material flow for palletising
The filled and cooled bottles are automatically packed into crates by a Beyer bottle packer. A spiral conveyor transports these crates to the upper level of the palletising system. There they first meet the grouping station and the row pusher, which create the layer pattern. A toothed belt drives a Synchronised servomotor the Series CMPZ.. from SEW-Eurodrive, the series slider. These are highly dynamic servomotors with a compact design. Four of these servomotors are installed to move the gantry. They drive the rotary axis A and the linear axes in the x, y and z directions and are equipped with absolute encoders for fail-safe positioning.
Multifunctional palletiser
A clamping jaw gripper picks up a complete layer and places it on a Euro pallet. The palletiser also unloads the empties pallets layer by layer and transfers the empties containers to an unloading table. From there, the individual crates are automatically transported to the Beyer bottle unpacker, where they are unpacked and transported on to the unscrambler, while the empty returnable crates are conveyed to the crate washer. The non-returnable bottles are packed in cartons or trays, which are also palletised. For this purpose, Beyer Maschinenbau built a second gripper which, according to its mode of operation Venetian blind gripper is called.
Exclusion of interference areas
To ensure collision-free operation of the machine, extensive interference areas had to be defined and excluded from the respective work area. Depending on the gripper head used, these interference zones can differ significantly from one another. A MOVI-PLC® advanced motion controller is responsible for coordinating the drive axes. The user programme running on it makes it possible to define up to 16 different interference zones. They can be individually configured and activated.
„In the implementation of the Interfering edge exclusion Both fast communication and high control quality of the components used are required. The MOVIAXIS® multi-axis servo inverters in conjunction with the synchronous servomotors from the CMPZ series offer both,“ emphasises Ralf Reinhardt, head of the technical office at SEW-Eurodrive in Meerane. „The MOVI-PLC® advanced motion controller controls the axis modules of the MOVIAXIS® system. It is in constant data exchange with the higher-level PLC of the palletising system. The control cabinet was installed on the platform at the height of the upper level based on the experience of the flood disasters.
The controller family from SEW-Eurodrive supports a broad portfolio of drive components. For example, the MOVI-PLC® advanced controls the blind of the blind gripper head, the walking beam, the row pusher and the row sorter of the grouping station. It also operates various actuators and sensors, such as the sensors for packing head monitoring. If a fault occurs on the packing head, it is acted upon directly in the MOVI-PLC® so that the drive axes can be stopped as quickly as possible.
Through a Standardised process data interface allows comprehensive and detailed specification of user parameters for both kinematic axes and additional axes. All user parameters are configured via an XML file. It can be read in both via the higher-level controller via fieldbus and directly in MOVI-PLC®. This makes machine startup very flexible and customisable to the respective machine type. This significantly reduces commissioning times. The controller used is so powerful that several kinematics can run independently of each other on the same controller.
About Beyer Maschinenbau GmbH:
Following its foundation in 1988, the business purpose of today's Beyer Maschinenbau GmbH was the manufacture of conveyor technology and semi-automatic packing machines. In 2002, the MultiPac and MultiPal series for packers and palletisers were developed. Since then, the company has been dedicated to the planning and construction of sorting, repacking and palletising systems[/infotext].
Many years of collaboration
Beyer Maschinenbau has been working with drive and control technology from SEW-Eurodrive for almost 20 years. In addition to the commitment and delivery from a single source, the geographical proximity is a major advantage for customers. SEW maintains a nationwide sales network in Germany with technical offices, drive centres and drive technology centres. The end user Sachsenobst also praises the Strong customer orientation and serviceability of the Bruchsal drive automation system.
