The software determines how smart, safe and maintainable a machine is. We program most of our control systems in CODESYS, and are equally at home in Siemens TIA Portal and LOGO!.
CODESYS is a development environment for PLC software based on the international standard IEC 61131-3. The big difference from the software of a single PLC brand: CODESYS runs on hardware from many different manufacturers. For years, we have programmed most of our control systems in it, from a single elevator to complete production lines.
For you as a client, this mainly means freedom and certainty: you are not tied to a single hardware supplier, and the software remains readable and extendable for the long term.
A control system must still be understandable in ten years' time, even for someone who did not help write it.
The more complex the line, the more expensive an error that only comes to light during commissioning. That is why we simulate the tricky parts of a control system in advance. Not in a heavyweight package, but with our own software in Python or JavaScript: quick to build, easy to adapt and easy to share with the client.
A simulation catches a lot, but not everything. We iron out the last exceptions in production, with small orders and as much variation as possible.
A machine that fetches its own orders and reports what it has produced saves retyping, errors and searching.
We connect the control system to the systems you use to run your business: your ERP or order system, your planning, a database or a reporting environment. Orders then go straight from the office to the machine, and whatever the machine produces, consumes or reports automatically flows back into your records.
Because we write both the PLC software and the integration, nobody has to translate in between. We speak the language of the machine and that of your software, and connect to what you already have rather than imposing a new package on you.
VST. Orders arrive as XML, are checked and processed using kanban. The production data goes to an SQL database for reporting.
FAAY. The control system writes the production data to a MySQL database; the operator sends a report per date from the touchscreen.
Strack vloeren. The contents of every cement silo are weighed and can be monitored online in tonnes.
Several production lines have cameras that we set up together with the control system. When there is a fault, we can look remotely not only into the PLC but also into the hall. Because the images are recorded, we can look back at what happened just before a fault. That saves searching and often a trip to the client.
The same cameras can also do some of the thinking. With image recognition, situations can be detected automatically, such as a person in a zone, a skewed or missing board or a full stack. We pass that detection on to the PLC, which turns it into an alarm, a notification or extra information for the operator. This turns a camera into an extra sensor that can see everywhere.
Three projects in which our CODESYS expertise made the difference.
For Juffermans Machinebouw, the controls for an automated production line: tracking of around fifty pipes at a time, a cutting plan that minimises waste, a CANopen network with Wago IO, integration with two welding robots and data export to an SQL database.
Five stations that together build up walls of flax and gypsum, with 56 SEW drives on a single Profinet network, vacuum frames with recipes, an endless core board with hot melt, a MySQL link and ten cameras.
New controls for the filling installation of the cement silos and the bucket elevator with hoppers: an Exor panel with CODESYS, remote IO via Profinet, weighing per silo and silo contents in tonnes that Strack can monitor online. With eWON, we provide remote support.
If your factory runs on Siemens, or your client requires it, we program in Siemens just as well. We work with Siemens S7 PLCs in TIA Portal, with LOGO! for smaller control systems and with Siemens operator panels.
If you have an existing Siemens installation that needs modifying or extending, we build on it. The same applies to Schneider, Wago and Beckhoff TwinCAT.
