My name is Stacy Tyler I work for Dr. Pepper in irving Texas. I have some question I hope you can answer. I have a problem at my bottling plant that I think you might be able to point me in the right direction. I will explain as best I can. I work on a machine that takes full Dr. pepper bottles (and other products of different sizes) and puts them in a box and wraps shrink film over it. The bottles get fed into this machine on conveyors and rails that guide these bottles have to be adjusted (width wise) to make the bottles merge in a certain pattern. If the rails are not adjusted correctly the bottles hang up or fall. Here is a picture of what Im talking about. Those rails that guide these bottles are adjusted on daily basis and sometimes twice a day for different products(some as small as 8oz bottles and some as big as 48oz bottle). They are adjusted by people that make a lot of mistakes which causes down time. I have found a linear actuator with a feedback that can be adjusted accurately. Along with a dc motor controller that can move these rails. What I need help with is how to control them.
I need a a way to control these 26 linear actuators controllerhttps://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1392
I need advice on the processor, power, data transit, and (copy paste) memory storage I see a lot of options on pololu.com/ that seem to be able to control these devices.
Keep in mind if the machine goes down I need to be able to replace parts, processors or software or whatever fails in a quickly. The majority of the processors that control the actuators are very cheap when it comes to Dr. Peppers pocketbook. So we can buy these and keep them in stock on site. So it needs to be able to have the SD card slot for plug and play type situations. I can get harnesses made for plug and play also. cfnewsads.thomasnet.com/images/l … 492318.jpg
What I would like is a touch screen to select different receipts (or should I say a locations for all 26 actuators). So when I select a receipt all 26 actuators go to a specific location. While the machine is running I need to be able to move the actuators in increments to adjust widths of the rails for fine tuning of the receipt and be able to save it for the next time we run that receipt. If the board fails I need to be able to pull the sd card out and put another one in, install the sd card, select a receipt and be running again.
