Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

Jorns Twinmatic machines have two different kinds of grippers. One is called the sheet gripper which is used most often for production and a flange/alternate gripper that is used for gripping over a flange and/or hem. The initial implementation of using the alternate gripper was not thorough enough to use them in a production setting.

The solution was to implement the correct functionality of the alternate grippers. If the Alternate Gripper is chosen for a step the alternate gripper will extend and open to be able to load the material. Using the gripper pedal will close the alternate gripper and it will stay extended and gripped until another step uses a different backgauge mode or the part is finished. If that is case the gripper pedal can be used to open the gripper and pressing the next step pedal will close and retract the alternate gripper.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

Jorns Twinmatic machines have two different kinds of grippers. One is called the sheet gripper which is used most often for production and a flange/alternate gripper that is used for gripping over a flange and/or hem. On some machines these grippers can be split up into zones to be able to use them separately. As in the one set will be opened and closed with a gripper pedal and the other set of grippers will be opened and closed with a different gripper pedal. This is done with separate I/O for each zone to control the grippers. Having zones was implemented for the sheet gripper previously, but not for the alternate gripper.

The solution was to add the ability to split the alternate grippers into zones like the sheet grippers. This gives separate control of the alternate grippers.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The FoldGuard safety system has two initial setups that have to be performed before the machine can be put into production. They are the overrun test and the mute point set. To do these setups the FoldGuard laser needs to be clear so it can get good values. In some cases though the machine might have something attached that blocks the laser. In this case it was a shear attached to the lower bending beam. Since this machine was a double folder it meant the shear can be moved out of the way by moving the lower bending beam retract down. This will be forced to happen if the Overrun Test Active input is on and the machine has a shear. The controller will also attempt to move the shear out of the way in run when it can.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

On some double folder machines the grippers can be split up into zones to control them separately based on the zone. Through Pathfinder you are able to jog the grippers open and closed if you want to. The problem is that it was set up to only jog whichever grippers were set up as zone 1. This doesn't really make sense because the user probably wants all the grippers to open and close for testing.

The solution was to make sure that the gripper jog buttons will open and close all of the grippers regardless of zone.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The 5226 controllers were initially implemented to do open loop moves to become clamped in a position based way. As in the move would be still be doing an open loop controlled move to get to the clamped target. The goal being the clamp ends up in tolerance of the clamped target and the machine is now clamped. When we started implementing for more machines the need for a pressure based clamped move was needed. As in the machine is not considered clamped until the pressure target has been reached. The controller still did open loop moves to the clamped closed position to try and reach this pressure target. A bug arose from this though because even though the goal is pressure reached, the controller was considering the move done if the closed position was reached. This means if the user set a closed position that did not reach the pressure target the machine could not get into a clamped state.

The solution to this problem was to make the controller make the clamp keep moving until pressure was reached. The controller knows the move is pressure based so it can identify when this needs to happen and not do it on other moves. This change allows the machine to get to a clamped state regardless of how low the closed position is.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

On some double folding machines the grippers are controlled through the hydraulics and have sensors that are hydraulic based for the state of the grippers. One problem that comes from this is that if the system does not have enough pressure built up the sensors will not detect the state of the gripper, but when the pressure is built up it will turn on the states input. Since the controller did not tell the gripper to move this unexpected state change creates an error.

To counteract this some logic was put in to initialize when needed. The controller now checks if the system pressure is under 20% and if the grippers have pressure feedback it will let the system get to 70%. During this time limit switch error conditions for the gripper are ignored. Once at 70% the controller will re-initialize the grippers and move on to what was going to happen.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

On single folder machines the operator uses the clamp down pedal to get into a clamped state and then has to press another pedal to get the bending beam to come up. On double folder machines the need for pressing a pedal is sometimes not needed since the part could be gripped and the operator is not holding on to the material. The problem is that if the part is not gripped the controller is also not requiring that pedal press. This should not be the case since the operator is potentially holding the material and close to the machine. Having the bending beam move without a confirmation from the operator could cause injury.

The solution to this problem was to require a confirmation pedal press once clamped when the material is not gripped. This is safer and gives the operator the opportunity to re-position the material if needed.