Automação elétrica: estudo de caso de uma célula mecatrônica DK8

Abstract

In industry, process integration is fundamental for automatic control in production units. Various forms of energy are used for control, such as electrical and pneumatic. The DK8 mechatronic cell is a control application with a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) for plant automation using electric and pneumatic actuators. This work studies the logic for actuating the actuators and the integration of updated information from scanning the readings applied in the Ladder programming language. Signal inputs were provided by switches, pushbuttons, inductive, capacitive, and optical sensors, travel limiters, and mushroom switches. Signal processing was performed by the PLC, and finally, the electric and pneumatic actuators were used: conveyor motors 1 and 2, and separators and grippers, respectively. The Ladder language used as a solution is a graphical language with horizontal lines containing the input elements and, finally, the output representation. The logic is read from left to right, top to bottom, in a scanning cycle. The methodology applied to this work was the analysis of the programming and the use of a specific program for simulation, testing, and validation of the logic inserted in the solution. The PLC is a solution for the automation of industrial processes, as exemplified by the control applied in the mechatronic cell.