There has always been a requirement for motion design in the packaging machine business because there has long been a requirement to mechanically move, fold, tuck, lift, twist, transfer or in some shape mold both product and packing to give a package. As soon as something moves in machinery, then a series of motions need to be weaved together.
A good engineer should be aware that if bad motion design is adopted into packaging machinery mechanisms, servos or cams, the machinery will almost certainly jam, need more upkeep, not run as efficiently be noisy and not last as long. Nonetheless with superior motion design, the same machine can be fully changed into a highly efficient, dependable fast, quiet and durable machine.
The SAME physical machine, but one with DIFFERENT motion design can give a significantly different performance.
What constitutes good motion design and bad motion design for an individual axis? Is it low peak velocity, low peak acceleration, motion continuity or low harmonic content? What's the correct way to weave all the individual motions together? Which mechanism are you able to afford to accelerate more? How closely can the motions overlap?
PSMotion have created MechDesigner software to allow you effortlessly design all the motions AND mechanisms in one application and simulate them all, running and synchronized precisely just like the planned machine.
At this point, the value of MechDesigner's real time inverse kinematics capability is also clearly evident. It is only by being able to use inverse kinematics and by having the ability to watch, edit and design the motions at the tooling, that you're able to squeeze the best from the motion design operation.
MechDesigner even allows you to effortlessly amend motion design 'on-the-fly ' so that you can achieve the very best machine, mechanism and motion design you need. What machine design business doesn't want that?
MechDesigner: Cad, Designed to Move.
A good engineer should be aware that if bad motion design is adopted into packaging machinery mechanisms, servos or cams, the machinery will almost certainly jam, need more upkeep, not run as efficiently be noisy and not last as long. Nonetheless with superior motion design, the same machine can be fully changed into a highly efficient, dependable fast, quiet and durable machine.
The SAME physical machine, but one with DIFFERENT motion design can give a significantly different performance.
What constitutes good motion design and bad motion design for an individual axis? Is it low peak velocity, low peak acceleration, motion continuity or low harmonic content? What's the correct way to weave all the individual motions together? Which mechanism are you able to afford to accelerate more? How closely can the motions overlap?
PSMotion have created MechDesigner software to allow you effortlessly design all the motions AND mechanisms in one application and simulate them all, running and synchronized precisely just like the planned machine.
At this point, the value of MechDesigner's real time inverse kinematics capability is also clearly evident. It is only by being able to use inverse kinematics and by having the ability to watch, edit and design the motions at the tooling, that you're able to squeeze the best from the motion design operation.
MechDesigner even allows you to effortlessly amend motion design 'on-the-fly ' so that you can achieve the very best machine, mechanism and motion design you need. What machine design business doesn't want that?
MechDesigner: Cad, Designed to Move.
About the Author:
Doctor Kevin J Stamp is the Technical Director of PSMotion Ltd who specialise in the development of special purpose machinery and in the development of machine design software, specifically MechDesigner. Kevin is an engineer and BSc in Mechanical Engineering with a PhD in High Speed Packaging Machine Design. He was an engineer in the British Merchant Navy and spent 15 years working for Unilever in the UK, India and USA. PSMotion was launched in 2004.
