Market: Machine Automation
Technology Partner: Sysma
Location: Italy

Project Introduction:
Rotogravure printing involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a cylinder because, like offset printing and flexography, it uses a rotary printing press. Once a staple of newspaper photo features, the rotogravure process is still used for commercial printing of magazines, postcards, and corrugated (cardboard) product packaging.

Our customer is leader in the rotogravure printing sector for packaging and a supplier of conversion equipment, this customer has a long history in the packaging market in Italy and specializes in printing and press machines production with different product lines. Their main concern was to keep production stable without stopping, but they also wanted a new solution that offered intelligent upgrades of different production plants. All machine lines need to be able to operate for 24H in harsh environments and need a high level of quality. For this specific application, they were looking for new reliable hardware for their new line of machines.

System Requirements:
The customer had two different production lines: for the first they were looking to replace their existing analogue monitor with a separate keyboard, with a small touch panel computer to monitor the colors on rotary printing. For the second line (packing and newspaper printing machines) they were looking for rugged box PC with PCI slot expansion and dual display to drive machine signals.

Project Implementation:
The first production line required a small footprint thin client computer installed into the printers, so that print staff can easily see what was happening on the line. So, with its low power consuming 1.6 GhZ Intel Atom processor the TPC-650H was the obvious choice.

To control and monitor the second production line, another small footprint thin client computer was required on the shop floor. Using Gigabit LAN this was connected to an EKI-7526I-AE Ethernet switch with 16 ethernet ports and memory buffers that support the store-and-forward mechanism, which assures that data is transmitted properly. A high temperature range UNO-3082 is a high performance Core 2 Duo Embedded Automation Computer with Microsoft Windows 7 and was connected to a high resolution 19” flat panel monitor. Through the UNO’s 1394b bilingual interfaces and Ethernet ports, engineers could also connect to and directly configure the print rollers from one central location.

System Description:
The first Production Line, the simplest, has a TPC-650H that locally manages colors in the printing process, including turning on/off the ink pump. Each TPC manages and controls all the printing groups and colors.

The second Production Line, is more structured and complex and includes one PLC that is managed and controlled by a UNO-3082, while an EKI-7526I-AE unmanaged Switch is connected to the PLC for switching process based on various commands. Finally an extra TPC-650H Touch Panel is added to manage and control different groups of colors inside the whole process. To enable the operators to control the machines we have also added an FPM-5191G touch screen industrial monitor.

System Diagram:

Conclusions:
The key to the success of this project was that it allowed a mix of different factors, including the excellent and long term good relationship between our Focus Partner SYSMA ELETTRONICA and the customer. This relationship enabled us to leverage the high quality and the good technical specs and reliability of Advantech products and have granted our success. Last, but not least, the dedicated and continuous local service and support by SYSMA together with the closed collaboration of Advantech allowed to catch the customer trust. This is not the end, but only the beginning of a long and successful partnership.

Intel feature: TPC-650H is powered with Intel® Atom™ N270 1.6 GHz processor; UNO-3082 has onboard Intel® Core™ 2 Duo L7500 1.6 GHz processor