43 www.drivesncontrols.com June 2024 COMMUNICATIONS n Wireless IO-Link comms bring multiple benefits to stone-polishing machines The Italian machine-builder Pedrini specialises in plants and machines for all phases of the stoneprocessing industry – from cutting and polishing, to resining and finishing. The company, founded in 1962, employs 120 people and its operation in Bergamo covers an area of more than 30,000m2. The company’s Spectra B220 planetary polishing and calibrating machine is used to grind natural stone including marble, granite and quartzite, in slabs up to 2,200mm wide. A calibrating head works across the slab surface to ensure planarity and regularity of the final thickness. The head consists of a rotating structure on which a group of independent electrospindles is mounted, each equipped with a 205mm-diameter diamond tool placed radially on a circumference, with a larger diameter than the processing width. A slab thickness reader, positioned on a conveyor roller bench at the machine’s entrance, consists of a series of vertically adjustable contact feelers that perform measurements using linear transducers. A control panel with a colour touchscreen monitor allows operators to program the machine and manage its operation directly on the display, without needing a keyboard. Optimal performance of the calibration system depends on accurate, real-time reading and control of the current drawn by each spindle while it is operating at high speed. Pedrini is now using a wireless IO-Link technology to monitor the spindles. Using this wireless system means that it can avoid the need to run communications cables from the spindles through sliprings to a PLC. The system has been simplified by using a wireless IO-Link bridge connected to a multiport I/O hub that communicates current data from eight spindles simultaneously. Each machine contains a total of 48 spindles, thus requiring six of these bridges. An IO-Link wireless master collects all of the data from the wireless bridges on the machine, and communicates it to the machine’s PLC. The data is visualised on a HMI, allowing the machine to be calibrated and optimised in real time. The use of wireless IO-Link communications has allowed Pedrini to switch from complex and costly communications sliprings on the calibrators, to smaller, more cost-effective versions. The use of the wireless technology has: n reduced slipring complexity, and reduced deployment time and effort; n increased flexibility – the wireless technology is simple to retrofit, and the system can be expanded easily, allowing dozens of spindles to be connected without slipring or cabling constraints; n improved maintenance – fewer spare parts are needed for expensive sliprings, cable wear-and-tear has been reduced, and there is less need for maintenance; and n enhanced reliability – CoreTigo, the developer of the IO-Link Wireless technology, claims it is a million times more reliable than conventional wireless systems such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. IO-Link Wireless is a deterministic, lowlatency (5ms) and scalable wireless communications protocol with low synchronisation rates (measured in tens of microseconds). It is based on the IEC 61131-9 IO-Link standard and is designed specifically for high-speed motion applications in harsh industrial environments. It can coexist with other networks – both wired and wireless – and does not require line-of-sight to operate. More than $18m has been invested in CoreTigo to date, with backers including Amazon, Emerson, Qualcomm and Verizon. “Implementing CoreTigo’s IO-Link Wireless technology enabled us to further innovate our plants and machines, digitalising these, and keep marching forward into the Industry 4.0 era,” says Pedrini’s automation coordinator, Michele Romano. “This allows us to offer our customers the increasingly higher level of service and ever-evolving work methods they are used to.” An Italian developer of stone-processing machinery has integrated a wireless IO-Link technology into one of its polishing and calibrating machines, simplifying its complexity compared to the previous slipring communications system, as well as saving time and easing maintenance. Pedrini has simplified communications on-board its polishing and calibrating machine by adopting a wireless IO-Link technology
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