Development of an experimental prototype of a manufacturing cell for process automation teaching

Abstract

For the industrial sector, the filling, sealing and labeling system represents one of the most used processes with several applications, that involves the food and beverage industry until the chemical plants, among many others applications. The propouse of this work is to develop an academic prototype of a manufacturing cell for teaching the automation of industrial processes, in order to emulate the filling, sealing and labeling system. The goal is to design a learning methodology such that the acquired academic knowledge can be transported to a real industrial environment. To achieve this, the PLC S7-300, industrial proximity sensors, pneumatic cylinders of the Festo brand, as well as their respective solenoid valves, are used. The programming methodology is based on a functional graph controlled by stages and transitions (GRAFCET). In contrart with other project based on Arduino, this project employs standard signals and variable scaling.