The pharmaceutical packaging industry in South Africa has been identified by specialist drive engineering company, SEW-Eurodrive, as a market that holds potential for significant future growth.
Electronics division manager, Norman Maleka, notes that a large percentage of pharmaceutical products are batched by PLC-controlled blister packaging machines that are required to operate flexibly and accurately with constantly changing materials and products.
“All packaging steps are controlled via PLC in a fixed sequence and the process requires the efficient, continuous and trouble-free production of approximately 24 000 blisters per hour,” he states.
All demands on productivity, precision and flexibility are met without separate motion control through direct control of the drives using the PLC via fieldbus. Maleka highlights the fact that the exact position of the blisters can be obtained through dynamic servo drives controlled by SEW-Eurodrive’s Movidrive inverters.
Movidrive’s built-in ‘Modulo Positioning’ application module enables the user to set positions ranging from 0 to 360°, in reference to the mechanical axle position of the load end. Maleka indicates that only those parameters required for modulo positioning have to be entered (number of teeth of the gear unit).
“The application module accomplishes these tasks with various operating modes which are selected using binary inputs or virtual terminals (control via fieldbus). The drive inverters control the machine axles with the technology function’s phase-synchronous operation, electric cam, register loop control and Modulo function. This ensures a reduced number of interfaces and a significantly reduced integration effort,” he continues.
Furthermore, SEW-Eurodrive products have been designed specifically with a clean operating environment in mind. The application solutions meet operating requirements in standard hygienic conditions and can also be used in areas where there is a need for resistance to aggressive cleansing agents and disinfectants.
All gear units come equipped with an installed and activated breather valve as standard, and all shaft mounted gear units are supplied with NOCO fluid paste to prevent contact corrosion.
Standard motors usually have cooling fins and fans where dirt collects and which are difficult to clean. SEW-Eurodrive offers the DAS series of aseptic gear units for drive solutions with smooth surfaces and no fans, which can be easily cleaned with water, and comes with an IP69K enclosure as standard. The drive package offers resistance to chemicals, cleansing agents and disinfectants.
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