Design and Research on the Pneumatic Packaging Manipulator Based on GT-Designer Configuration Software

Abstract

A coordinated control method of manipulator driven by multiple pneumatic cylinders was proposed herein. Based on the characteristics of the strip-shaped products and processing requirements of the automatic packaging product line, a manipulator for clamping the products to performing the space position transformation and rotation was designed by using the software SolidWorks. The multi-cylinders sequential operational circuit composed of two rod-less pneumatic cylinders and three general pneumatic cylinders and the corresponding control valves was virtually debugged by using the software FluidSim. The control system was also constructed of PLC module with the touching screen, whose program was compiled and simulated in the software GX Developer and Simulator. And the monitor interface of the touching screen was developed in the configuration software GT-Designer, which is used to monitor the operation status of the PLC control system of the manipulator. Finally，experiments was performed on the proto device. Results of experiments demonstrated that the design method and constructing schedule of the manipulator could realize the grasping of multiple strip-shaped products and their space translation, rotation and packaging, and the manual packaging of the multiple strip-shaped products could be substituted with the manipulator.