Format adjustment made easy

The demands on the flexibility of modern production facilities have become a key challenge for machinery manufacturers over recent times. With a wide product variety, increasingly small batch sizes, the need for seamless manufacturing, clear and accurate labelling and short setup times, are all key issues that the designers of modern production and packaging machines need to solve.

In addition the reliability of the positioning systems employed is key for an effective and flexible production process, irrespective of whether these are inexpensive handwheels, bus-compatible position indicators or fully automatic actuators. As the original inventor of the mechanical digital position indicator, Siko is the global market leader in the field of format adjustment solutions.

Manual format adjustment

Siko makes format adjustment easy, with its wide range of scalable technologies. These solutions can be in the form of simple mechanical indicators which provide a low cost, easy to install but robust solution. These provide repeatable setting of an axis and give operators simple clarity of their location.

They can be offered with a range of accessories to enable suitability in many different applications. Further options are available to cater for position, orientation, and a wide range of mechanical ratios to suit varying spindle pitches.

Monitored format adjustment

To improve the machine handling still further, electronic position indicators also provide finer scaling values and other useful features such as position feedback by use of field bus communications. The use of integrated absolute encoders results in correct positioning information at all times. Other features include adjustment for backlash in the system, and also the ability to provide an accurate target position by setting a target window position range. 

This solution from Siko ensures that incorrect setting or omitting to set an axis is not possible, as the central machine controller is constantly monitoring all positions. Bright LEDs provide clear indication of current position values against target position, together with direction indication and simple red -green indicators to signal the device is in or out of location. Such clarity enables speedy and accurate format changeover and high levels of control. 

The integrated electronic displays can show axis name and other useful data.  Electronic indicators are available with a wide range of communication protocols to suit all common methods of machine control, and thereby providing very simple integration.

Automatic format adjustment

For the machines where demand is higher still, where manual access is difficult, or space is constrained, Siko’s automatic position actuators are the ideal solution. These are extremely compact, combining the latest DC brushless technologies, absolute encoders and position controller, all in one very compact body.

Fieldbus communication is possible via all common industrial protocols, including Ethernet based standards, resulting in all of the benefits that industry 4.0 offers. These provide complete automation of the format changeover from a simple press of a button or a command from the machine controller, allowing the operator to focus on other production tasks.

These electronic technologies significantly benefit the current trends of increasing product complexity, higher product variety and reduced batch sizes. Such systems are designed to integrate within all areas of production, inspection, transfer, cartoning, packaging, labelling and printing and therefore add real benefits to the seamless flow of production lines.

The FMCG industry in particular has seen increases in demands with production facilities being pushed to their limit. Machine uptime and high output are key, with little or no time for breaks in production. Format changeover is increasingly important to ensure correct product flow – for example to ensure correct serialisation and traceability in pharmaceutical packaging machines. 

The aim in the FMCG sector is always to select the optimum settings and machine configurations during the production process to reduce unwanted deviations of the process and ultimately of the product. Competitive pressure is high, and it is no longer sufficient to produce the highest possible quantities of a product within a short time. In addition, there are strict and constantly changing regulations according to which specific production process is being performed. Products must be manufactured efficiently and reliably.

Gapp Automation offers intelligent positioning systems for machine manufacturers and end users with the scalable range of Siko mechanical position indicators, electronic monitored position indicators and fully automated positioning actuators, all helping to make format changes faster, 100% reliable, with full traceability.