Spiromatic contacted us to create a new machine for wrapping their silos in glass fiber. The machine they used was a few years deprecated and there was a hard time finding spare parts or service for it. The request was to develop an in-place replacement to entirely take over the old machine, this made the project an interesting challenge. Time was of the essence and we soon learned we only had one week to make it happen.
By implementing a smart combination of rigorously and proven software libraries, we came over the hurdle of communicating with the older PLC and frequency controllers. We included a callibration of the weighing cells plus additionally storing these on a windows system for later retrieval (using a CSV file format for easy consumption). The communication and controlling of the older PLC was done over a serial communication line, which in turn controls the frequency controllers, pumps and valves plus the entire interface of the machine.
![wikkel machine](https://www.db-engineering.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/wikkel-machine-1024x576.jpg)
Used Hardware
- B&R Windows Touchpanel