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Smart Packaging Solutions: Retrofit for speed

Promation retrofitted Smart Packaging Solutions’ folding-gluing machine with SINAMICS S120 and S7-1517T for more speed, energy efficiency and reliability.

Cardboard packaging is in demand and Smart Packaging Solutions feels it. Therefore, they are substantially scaling up production of solid board boxes for food. They did not buy a new machine for this purpose, but fitted a production line from the 1960s with a brand new SIMATIC S7-1517T controller. Dave Van Nooten, in charge of technical services: “Sustainability is not only in our products, but also in our production.”

Cardboard is the future

Cardboard packaging is on the rise, especially for food. Packaging specialist Smart Packaging Solutions has grown tremendously in recent years. “Cardboard is much more recyclable than plastic,” says Dave Van Nooten, in charge of technical services. “This is why governments promote cardboard packaging tremendously. Think of strawberries: you see them less and less in plastic boxes. Mushroom growers are also increasingly switching to cardboard.”

Of course, all that cardboard has to be produced somewhere. “Our facility in Loenen makes pulp from waste paper and then turns it into cardboard. Here, in Oudergem, we print the cardboard, afterwards we punch in the right fold lines and shapes and then fold and glue them to make usable boxes.”

The latter is done on a folding-gluing line dating back to the 1960s. “Mechanically, those machines are indestructible. When we retrofit them with a new controller, they become faster, more economical and more efficient. A retrofit is also much more sustainable than buying a new machine.”

Promation - Cardboard is the future

Lightning-fast synchronisation

Making the machine run faster proved no small challenge. The boxes pass along a series of guides to fold them. One flap passes a moving rear hook, which has to fold the flap at exactly the right moment. “The shaft with the rear hooks cannot move continuously because the boxes are not equally spaced. An electronic eye registers when a box arrives, and then the shaft has to synchronise with the main motor at lightning speed and immediately desynchronise, otherwise the next box would get stuck.”

Promation - Stijn Provoost

About Smart Packaging Solutions and Promation

Smart Packaging Solutions has been making boxes for packaging mainly food since 1989. Three plants produce some 150,000 tonnes of solid board packaging a year. It is part of the global VPK Group.

Promation was founded by Stijn Provoost as a progressive automation partner. The company is mainly active in robotics and vision systems. It now counts more than 10 experts in automation.

A colleague had told us that we would never achieve the required speeds with a Siemens PLC. That was a great challenge—and we have proven otherwise.
Stijn Provoost, Business Manager, Promation

“We work exclusively with Siemens equipment,” says Stijn Provoost, business manager at Promation, the company that built the new control system. “But a colleague had told us that we would never achieve the required speeds with a Siemens PLC. That was a great challenge—and we have proven otherwise.”

“The heart of our controller is the SIMATIC S7-1517T. The T stands for Technology. The advanced motion features in the PLC helped in this project. Thus, we more than meet the requested cycle times. Combined with the SINAMICS S120 drive, we can perform the complex synchronisations with high precision.”

“The speed at which we run depends on the box, but for some boxes we now run twice as fast,” agrees Dave. “And not only the speed has improved. Above all, hook control is much more accurate. This makes it much less likely to jam, even at higher speeds. We had to retrain our operators: they were used to running the machine slowly because otherwise it would get stuck anyway. We don’t have to do that now.”

The retrofit also saves time. Dave: “We used to have to set the machine manually for each type of box. We run many small runs—sometimes only a few hundred pieces—and have more than 1,000 different types of boxes. So a lot of time went into that. Promation wrote a simple program for us in WinCC Unified where we can select the box type and enter two dimensions, and the machine sets itself up.”

Promation - Dave Van Nooten
Our operators can now calculate the right parameters at the push of a button. This saves time and makes us less dependent on experience.
Dave Van Nooten, responsible for technical services, Smart Packaging Solutions

“Not only do we save set-up time, but there is also less downtime. The automatic setting makes the machine jam less. We also no longer get bogged down by mis-folded boxes. Stijn made a box ejector for us. If it detects an error, it just throws the box out. The machine used to stop and an operator had to take out the box and restart the machine.”

Thanks to the SINAMICS S120 drives, we no longer need brake resistors that posed a risk of fire.
Dave Van Nooten, responsible for technical services, Smart Packaging Solutions

Some 20 motors were added to the machine for automatic setting. Yet it is now also more energy efficient. “We drive our motors with SINAMICS S120 drives. These exchange energy on the DC circuit: when one motor brakes, another uses that braking energy to start. This eliminates the need for combustion resistors, which convert braking energy into heat. With cardboard particles flying around in the factory, this posed a risk of fire.”

Second retrofit on the way

“We are growing so fast that we recently purchased a similar folding-gluing machine. We are now converting that too with a new control.” Not much will change, Stijn says: “During adjustment, we can still gain some efficiency by eliminating reverse backlash. We then let our guides move from inside to outside each time. But that’s it. Otherwise, this control is perfect.”

“We are very satisfied,” agrees Dave. “We now have a machine that runs faster and better as well as being more accurate and safer. With the second line added, we are all set to further scale up sustainable packaging. This was a very good collaboration with Promation, on to the next one!”

The benefits in a nutshell

  • Shorter set-up times: automatic width and hook adjustment via servos
  • Higher speed: precise synchronisation enables higher cycles
  • Less downtime: standardised recipe settings reduce operator errors
  • Energy efficiency: reuse of braking energy
  • More safety: no more hot resistors, so no fire risk.
  • Ease of use: intuitive operation via TIA-based HMI.