Definitions

Today's serial production machines are often equipped with state-of-the-art process monitoring systems that ensure controlled and reliable production. The production is mostly controlled by measuring the manufacturing forces and monitoring them by means of dynamic envelope technology with immediate stop of the machine in case of hurting envelope limits. Any detected or supposed errors, as well as random fluctuations in the sensor signals, lead to a more or less long machine downtime, which impairs the productivity of the system. Operators often tend to unnecessarily coarse envelope limits just for a bit of “peace”. As a result, of course, the reject rate rises again due to wasted monitoring accuracy.

Therefore, an automatic sorting of error and "suspicious" parts with appropriate sorting flaps makes sense while the machine continues to run. Detected errors are safely rejected and cannot mix with the previously produced good parts. Envelopes stay enough fine-adjusted without unnecessary machine stops. The machine is only switched off when multiple errors occur in succession.

Modern process monitoring systems offer a variety of settings for a machine-adapted control of the sorting gate including a function check by monitoring limit switches on the gate.