The core of our "Control Technology and Robotics" laboratory (STT) is a compact model factory built in 2013 by the company Festo didactic. In laboratory courses or projects accompanying the lectures, our students thus have the opportunity to gain first-hand experience related to real factory components and control devices.
Students can solve tasks in areas such as project planning, parameter settings and programming as well as operation – from engines to control centers – in practice-oriented production processes. The focus lies on PLC and CNC technologies as well as robotics and industrial communications.
Equipment
Our model factor is currently consists of the following components:
- 3-axial CNC milling machine (EMCO) with simulator and control (Siemens 840D-Emulation)
- two 6-axial buckling arm robots (Mitsubishi)
- two mobile robots (Festo) with WLAN interface
- four PLC-controlled control stations (Siemens S7-315, Festo CPX)
- control center with a SCADA system (Siemens WinCC)
- decentralized periphery (Profibus) and vavle islands
- various actuators (e.g. propulsion devices, pushers), sensors (e.g. color, material, RFID) and servo drives
Additionally, we provide our students with 12 work stations equipped with state-of-the-art industrial software tools:
- Siemens TIA-Portal / Simatic S7-Manager
- Siemens WinCC
- CoDeSys V3
- MATLAB / Simulink / Stateflow
- CIROS Automation Studio
Kuka KR6
KUKA KR6 is a 6-axial industrial robot, equipped with a pneumatic gripper and distance detection. It can move work pieces weighing circa 6 kg within a range of circa 20 m³. The robot is programmed and controlled via a work station outside the safety guard (2 m/s speed in automatic operation mode) or via handheld operation modules commonly used in the industries. Besides tech-in programming for various coordination systems, our students learn about communication with the robot PLC and its peripheral devices (e.g. the robot’s gripper).
RoboDK
RoboDK is a software for simulation and offline programming of various industrial robots. With this software, the processing strategies of our different robots can be simulated, checked and, if necessary, adjusted in advance. Thus, errors and collisions are reduced to a minimum before the robot cell is put into operation.
DSpace real-time system
The real-time system developed by DSpace GmbH, Paderborn, provides default patterns for instrumentation and control engineering functionalities in form of MATLAB / Simulink block diagrams. This allows for sampling times of less than 0.1 ms.
Because of this, our students are provided with a powerful development environment for model validation as well as tests for modern control algorithms. Current examples for devices connected to the real-time system in our model factory are a linear axis with electrodynamic propulsion (plunger coil) and elastically linked loads.
EMC – open source CNC control via Linux
EMC (Enhanced Machine Controller) is an open source CNC software, allowing control of multi-axial devices. EMC consists of a G-Code interpreter and various engine control modules, controlling both multiphase motors as well as servo motors. This also includes PID controllers and incremental rotary encoders. The motor control output can be realized via one or multiple parallel ports or special cards. A current example for this is in our model factory is the communication and control of a model robot.