Renovation of Control System of the Contour Cutter for EPS Cutting

Abstract: We are working on many projects within the cooperation with praxis. One such cooperation was the project of changing the contour cutter control system for cutting of expanded polystyrene (EPS) in PLASTIKA a.s. Nitra. The OEM was composed of hardware from different manufacturers; it was old and served out. For all that we decided to use CNC system Siemens SINUMERIK 802D sl as a new control system. The change was made in six weeks and consists of the delivery and assembly of the new servo – drives and control system. We have also made some custom solutions to fulfill the requirements of the customer e. g. 12 bit AD converter for speed control and 8 bit DA converter for temperature control. The cutter has three axes, where two of them are coupled. We solved this problem through a custom postscript, which postprocesses the cutting program. The working – out of the documentation and induction course for the staff was of course certainty. Since we have done our job the contour cutter has bigger memory (for storing the cutting programs), it has higher precision and more user friendly GUI. Using a simple CAM system we achieve full visual control during a cutting program creation, which makes the work for designers more comfortable. Furthermore we minimized the price as much as possible to achieve satisfaction on both sides - ours and customers.