Minimal downtimes in the event of a fault

Dri­ve and automa­tion spe­cial­ist Baumüller has extend­ed its new SAF 002/003 safe­ty mod­ules of the b Maxx 5000 con­vert­er series with a freely para­me­ter­i­z­able delay time. The delay time is switched between a safe­ty func­tion and the asso­ci­at­ed error reac­tion Safe Torque Off (STO). This pro­vides opti­mum pro­tec­tion for the machine mechan­ics against dam­age in the event of a fault and min­i­mizes downtimes.

Typ­i­cal­ly, the safe­ty mod­ules are equipped with var­i­ous safe­ty func­tions that can be used for safe mon­i­tor­ing when required. For exam­ple, if a lim­it val­ue vio­la­tion is detect­ed dur­ing the safe mon­i­tor­ing of a speed, the sys­tem reacts by trig­ger­ing the STO func­tion, which switch­es the dri­ve torque-free. How­ev­er, in this case the motor may not come to a con­trolled stand­still, which means it may coast down.

The benefits: risk prevention and increased productivity

Baumüller has now devel­oped an inno­va­tion for the SAF 002/003 safe­ty mod­ules: The para­me­ter­i­z­able delay time is a time win­dow, indi­vid­u­al­ly user-pro­gram­ma­ble depend­ing on the safe­ty func­tion, which is switched between the safe­ty func­tions and the STO function.

For exam­ple, if dur­ing active Safe Lim­it­ed Speed (SLS) speed mon­i­tor­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly para­me­ter­ized speed is exceed­ed, the delay time is start­ed. The safe­ty mod­ule simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sends a sig­nal to the con­vert­er to per­form a spe­cif­ic action. This action can be para­me­ter­ized in advance; for exam­ple, the con­vert­er decel­er­ates the dri­ve in a con­trolled man­ner with­in the set time. Only when the machine has come to a stand­still is the dri­ve safe­ly switched torque-free.

Application: embroidery machine

One typ­i­cal area of appli­ca­tion for this func­tion is in the tex­tile indus­try. If a machine oper­a­tor moves with­in the dan­ger zone of a machine, it can auto­mat­i­cal­ly start safe mon­i­tor­ing and reduce the speed (SLS).

If the active speed mon­i­tor­ing SLS detects that the set speed lim­it has been exceed­ed, the safe­ty mod­ule auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch­es on the pre­vi­ous­ly para­me­ter­ized delay time before trig­ger­ing the STO function.

The con­troller receives the sig­nal to remove the nee­dle from the fab­ric with­in this time before STO is exe­cut­ed and the dri­ve is switched torque-free. This func­tion­al­i­ty can, for exam­ple, pre­vent nee­dle break­age or an error in the embroi­dery pat­tern and allow pro­duc­tion to resume swiftly.