Synchronisation without a parallel axis to the conveying direction

The conveyor tracking functionality offers the option of synchronisation for machines that have no axis in the direction of conveyor movement and therefore cannot co-move with the linear conveyor. For example, this is the case with machining units that can only be fed at right angles to the conveying direction. In this case, a virtual axis parallel to the conveying direction must be created as a simulation axis in the first main axis index (P-AXIS-00020). The absence of a parallel axis must be configured in the channel parameters using the conveyor_sync.x_virtual parameter (P-CHAN-00364).

Since the processing unit cannot move in the conveying direction, the relative movement between the tool and the workpiece is only carried out by the linear conveyor. This results in the following restrictions which must be taken into account when programming contours:

• The feed rate is dependent on the conveyor velocity and cannot be influenced independently.
• The programmed contour must be programmed completely in the opposite conveying direction.
• The programmed contour must be designed so that it does not overshoot the dynamic limits of the machine since it is not possible to reduce conveyor velocity to maintain these limits.
• The programmed contour must be twice continuously differentiable. Therefore, it may not contain any knee angles and must be continuously curved when the direction is changed. Smoothing methods such as polynomial contouring or spline interpolation can be used for this purpose.

Notice

The contour must also be continuous at the edges. To achieve this, the tool must be pre-positioned tangentially or the contour must be programmed so that the edges are tangential to the conveying direction.