Birth of a friendly labeller

The ‘brain’ technology behind a labeller controls an entire system and lies behind the ability to communicate with all the motors and components making up the system. The past has shown technology that was less expensive to manufacture in high volumes would come with a steep cost of ownership due to repair and maintenance needs.

The circuit board in the 1980s marked the dawn of a new era for machinery. However there is a high price to pay for the owner of machinery with logic board controllers or electronic boards. The end user faces a cost to exchange or replace an electronic board that is higher than the initial purchase price that machine builders pay. All the information pertaining to the behaviour of the system is embedded, or burned, into a chip and cannot be altered. Repair or replacement is out of the hands of an in-house technician and down to the manufacturer, with financial consequences.

The ‘next generation’, and now most popular, electronic boards are more accommodating. Although more flexible, they still require complicated programming and trained individuals to carry out the task.

A microprocessor was simply too limited to expand with a complete labelling system: PLCs (programmable logic controllers) made life easier. The major headache here was, and still is, the limitation of each PLC: although PLCs can process many components and complex functions, they first need to be configured for expandability. The advantages of PLCs are that they are extremely reliable, armoured for severe conditions such as dust, moisture, heat and cold, and have the facility for extensive input and output (I/O) arrangements.

The ultimate combination

Servo motors combined with servo drives and HMI (human machine interface) touchscreens arguably make the ultimate combination for a great labeller as far asusers are concerned.

A servodrive receives a command signal from a control system, amplifies the signal, and transmits electric current to a servomotor - to produce motion proportional to the command signal. Changing a simple parameter on a touchscreen - speed for instance - triggers every component to instantly alter their behaviour as part of a perfect team.

Nita Labeling Equipment’s labelling brainpower with a ‘friendlier’, more flexible approach has been on the market for some years. As end users become more conscientious about avoiding wasted products and labels and efficient use of their staff. I believe that the packaging and labelling industry should be steering away from traditional motors and PLC controllers, as Nita Labelling has done.

Nita’s interpretation of HMI includes adjustments of speeds and peripherals, diagnostics, and language selections as well as batch metering to keep track of labelled quantities. Meanwhile, on-screen sensor troubleshooting simplifies an operator’s life.

In short, Nita ensures full access with passwords to all the inner workings of the system including servo settings, polarity, torque and more. Importantly, this renders the entire system non proprietary and available to anyone.