PC-based security printing system meets promotional needs in a timely manner

To stay ahead in the packaging and printing market, we must respond quickly to customer needs. Imaje USA, a manufacturer of printing and labeling systems, has developed a PC-based security printing system that specifically addresses the demanding and rapidly evolving promotional market in the packaging printing industry. This control device gives the company's printing system great support in terms of speed and accuracy.

For a printing system, the all-in-one display and control system for desktops is characterized by a small footprint.

Excellent custom-customer product manufacturers often tie instant win promotions and products together in order to stir up their products and increase brand credibility. Regardless of whether the prize is a new car or a free bottle of sparkling water, the fast customization, the safety of the competition and the rigorous precision ensure that the prize is properly awarded to the winner. The success of the prize-driven market competition is extremely high. Pivotal.
To understand how NuteK is replacing the traditional PLC controller with Beckhoff system on its labeler

For manufacturers, one of the last things to do is to prevent them from accidentally awarding two awards when they only intend to award one big prize, and suffer from bad opinion of public opinion, or prevent the company’s employees from making friends and relatives. The Grand Prix was deliberately manipulated to create an inner ghost. In order to ensure that these potential pyrotechnic problems do not occur in their customers, Imaje USA has developed a PC-based security printing system that specifically addresses the growing market for the promotion of packaging and printing.

Imaje is a strong player in the packaging and printing industry, producing equipment that can quickly change production or process special packaging information, such as product expiration dates, lot numbers, manufacturing locations, shipping labels and bar codes. Usually only a few short months from order placement to the final delivery of customized products, Imaje needs to respond quickly to customer needs in order to maintain its leading position in this demanding and rapidly evolving market. Despite tight delivery schedules, Imaje's control equipment is well-known for its ability to support the company's printing system in terms of speed and accuracy.

Daimon Schingeck, technical manager of Imaje USA, said, “The promotional market is still a relatively new market compared to most other opportunities for packaging and printing. After we see this market as a good opportunity, we will soon Priority was given to developing a system."

Industrial network signal conversion heads are connected via modular, expandable electronic terminal units and Ethernet. The industrial network signal conversion head can recognize the terminals connected to them and automatically execute the task of inputting and outputting commands to the graphical interface.

In the fall of 2004, Imaje received a special custom order for promotional printing. Imaje therefore conducted a survey to determine a safe, highly flexible system that successfully manages instant lottery contest data and prints on customer-customized merchandise in order to easily and accurately award prizes. Initial investigations of PLC and PC suppliers by Globalspec Imaje, an online engineering resource network, Schingeck believes that the requirements of PC controllers and promotional printers from Beckhoff Automation, LLC are the best match.

As the system's requirements were met, Imaje set out to discuss with Beckhoff's sales and support staff how to create the best PC-based controller mechanism in the first collaboration. In a short period of three months - October to December 2004 - Imaje completed the entire process from the initial design stage to the first installation of this perfect, trend-setting system. This was done by a four-person team from Imaje. "It was a fairly continuous and flawless process from the very beginning to the experience of the industrial PC and the final product," Schingeck said. "Integrating code and protocol into a PC-based system is simple. After receiving a few days of TwinCAT on-site training from a Beckhoff support engineer, we can operate completely independently."

The pedestal system created by this project is now called Imaje ProControl-I(TM). ProControl-I system can adapt to a large number of packaging, including cartons and bottles, as well as plastic containers and pouch packaging. The system can support multiple presses at the same time. Imaje's printer uses a continuous ink jet method that deflects ink droplets onto the package by deflecting electrostatically charged ink droplets. The inkjet head does not come into direct contact with the product during this process.

On the controller side, Imaje selected the Beckhoff CP6502 built-in tablet PC, which acts as both a hardware human/machine interface and a stand-alone controller. It has an integrated 15-inch thin film transistor display and a 2.4-GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor. Tablet PCs use Beckhoff's TwinCAT PLC software as a control platform. This software features all applicable programming languages ​​that conform to IEC 61131-3 international standards, and also has a powerful 32-bit development environment dedicated to solving barcode size and data area programs that exceed traditional PLC system processing capabilities. TwinCAT PLC integrates four PLCs with multi-tasking functions, each with four tasks in each PLC runtime system. Both development and runtime systems can be processed in one PC or remotely programmed via Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

“Because Beckhoff's TwinCAT Tablet PC has the dual role of display and controller, we have created a powerful yet compact system. The extremely small footprint has become a key selling point for ProControl-I sales,” said Schingeck. In addition, as a display, this design allows the entire control system, including I/O connections, to be placed in the same architecture.

The ProControl-I system handles packages that pass through the transport system. Once the package is detected by the camera eye and the encoder, ProControl-I downloads a special barcode from the security database and tags each product with the Imaje printer. The system can download and print at the fastest speed of 22 products per second. After the download is completed and the print confirmation monitor is performed, the existing record can be deleted, so that the promotion information cannot be read repeatedly, and the system is also designed to have tamper-evident and error-free functions. The BK9000 I/O bus coupler is used as the connection network between the system's Beckhoff bus terminal I/O and the Ethernet TCP/IP protocol. Ethernet was chosen as the fieldbus because of its connectivity to promotional databases and its extensibility for future designs.

There was no doubt that Schingeck was very happy to spend such a short period of time from the idea to the final molding system. "This is not typical for the market segment that Imaje serves at the same time as the promotion market," he said. “The delivery time of every order we make is very short, but ProControl-I lets us leap to a completely different level. We therefore have more time to adapt to other market segments. With the help of flexible PC-based controllers and software, we have very few obstacles, if any, in designing this full-speed sprint to the final production line.”

As manufacturers continue to increase their budgets in a market that is perfectly integrated with instant winning sales promotion, ProControl-I's system orders have not shown signs of slowing down. After filling its supply warehouse with Beckhoff's control elements, Imaje is now fully able to keep pace with this growing demand.

"No one knows exactly how much the sales promotion market will grow in the last few years," said Schingeck. “But with our rapid design and the smooth application of Beckhoff PC-based safety controllers, we can effectively meet the needs of existing customers in this segment of the market. Due to early success, Imaje asserted that in the packaging printing market ProControl-I in the section will become the industry standard."

Source: Packaging Expo