A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2006

Motion is a key function which drives the manufacturing and it leads to motion-control as one of the primary task in industrial automation. In general motion is controlled and transferred using mechanical parts to do the required application. As complexity of the application grows the complexity of the transferring mechanical elements also grows and that introduces constrains on the flexibility of the system. In this thesis we find, design and validate an alternative method to control and transfer the motion to the required application with higher flexibility. As an alternative method, Mechatronics way has been elected. Mechanical pararneters of the application are transferred into electronic control system using information technology. As part of the validation of this Mechatronics way, two of the most used mechanical elements gear and carn has been elected. It has been designed as re-configurable Soft-gear and Soft-earn and validated using a model application. To implement this flexible motion control, Technology PLC plays the role of hardware. Technology PLC has the standard functions and added feature for motion control. Step? and S7TConfg are the software used to design the Soft-gear and Soft-earn for the requirement of model application. Using Protool as a HMI for the model application, the reach of the flexible control system has been validated. Packing machine has been choused as model application to validate the flexible motion control. In general packing machine has many mechanical parts for its efficient production of products with different dimensions. Those mechanical gears and carn has been replaced using Soft-gear and Soft-earn and this flexible motion control is validated using human machine interface.