ICM 4.0 – Injection Moulding Machine Control and Monitoring

Abstract

Today, gathering relevant information on a certain industrial process and being able to monitor and store that data is now more important than ever. In the plastic industry, there has been a necessity to retrofit injection machines that have outdated controllers and with no communication capability. Therefore, it is pretended to conceive an automatic system, using a Siemens programmable automaton, that would allow the monitoring and supervision of the injection machine’s process, and creating an OPC-UA interface following EUROMAP 83 specifications to communicated with the digital twin. EUROMAP 77 is the new Industry 4.0’s standard for data exchange between injection machines and automated process management systems (Building Management Systems-BMS, manufacturing execution systems–MES, Enterprise Resource Planning–ERP, etc.). EUROMAP 83 adds to EUROMAP 77 the communication between injection machines via OPC-UA interface. In the Superior School of Technology and Management (ESTG) of Politécnico de Leiria, there is a plastic injection Moulding machine (Euroinj D-80), belonging to the Mechanical Technology Lab of the Mechanical Engineering Department. That machine will be the target of this study. It is also pretended to study the quality control of the process to ensure the best quality of the finished product, through the measurement of parameters, such as the mould pressure and temperature.