TwinCAT 3 Plastic Framework: A modular toolbox

The TF8540 software library brings together our many years of expertise in plastics, seamlessly integrating important industry-specific control functions into the established TwinCAT Engineering environment. The TF8540 enables comprehensive software-based temperature control in plastics processing operations. It includes a software temperature controller that is specifically designed to handle sluggish controlled systems in plastics applications. The software temperature control supports virtually any number of controlled systems, while the integrated auto-tune function that determines the control parameters for thermally coupled heating zones enables optimum process adaptation. The software library also facilitates intelligent band heater monitoring by means of current or power measurement with a minimal number of sensors.

The TF8550 software library brings together our many years of expertise in plastics to form a TwinCAT HMI package developed specifically for the plastics industry. The TF8550 not only offers visualizations and comprehensive HMI applications with minimal development effort, but can also be seamlessly integrated into the other technology packages. Based on the TF2000, the TF8550 provides intuitive user guidance for HMIs found in plastics machinery by means of industry-typical graphic objects and an extensive range of user-friendly functions for specific plastics processes. Graphic objects can be configured for visualization in extrusion lines (temperature input/display), in blow molding technology (wall thickness editor, arrow diagram), for injection molding machines (table editor, graphic actual value/setpoint display), and much more besides. The interactions and HMI layout of the TF8550 are based on the requirements of the plastics market and are continuously being expanded. What’s more, the overall look and feel can even be configured to suit customer-specific HMI brand design.

The TwinCAT 3 TF8560 technology package combines our many years of motion expertise from the plastics industry. It includes field-proven, pre-developed standard blocks for typical motion applications in plastics machinery. The available motion functions are specially prepared to offer an integrated safety solution with TwinSAFE, while the standard blocks significantly reduce development and commissioning times. The TF8560 supports intuitive axis commissioning and virtual commissioning by means of integrated simulations.

TwinCAT offers many features and various software function blocks for all automation tasks.