Machinery / Industrial Parts & Tools

1/Introduction: Cool candy, packed life

Candies are the easiest to bring a light intoxication. The magic of candy is realized through the colorful packaging on the outside. The value of eating in the mouth may be far less than throwing away. Many people often question the meaning of excessive packaging, but in fact, without these attractive packaging, and only faithful to the nature of candy, it will be difficult for the candy industry to survive, and many good memories have also lost their hold. place.

And the colorful candies actually hide the secrets of the machines behind them. The bitterness and sweetness are the true taste of the rise of China's machinery manufacturing. Under the pulse of the times, Chinese manufacturing has its own driving force.

2/Consumer fashion, engineer’s challenge

The budding of China's candy packaging industry started with manual packaging operations. Chewing gum, bubble gum, and all kinds of candies in double-twisted packaging that became popular after the 1970s are basically manual operations. The printing factory divides the packaging materials, and the candy factory needs to shape the packed candies. The completion is manual packaging. The packaging materials need to be heated and sealed by an iron to nod and connect. Every time you go to a candy factory, you can see hundreds of female workers huddling together to complete the packaging operation. The rise of China's light industry machinery was a labor-intensive and meticulous job at the beginning, and female workers played a decisive role in this.

The candy packaging machine was still a rare product at the time, and it had to be imported. A single packaging machine needs 100 to more than 2 million yuan; and a production line requires an astronomical investment of 20 to 30 million yuan. In Chengdu, an engineer from a research institute, after careful study of foreign equipment, began to try to make a packaging machine for sheet chewing gum instead of some simple manual labor. This company is Chengdu Sanke. The first wave of domestic packaging machinery began its journey.

The global confectionery packaging equipment basically presents the top four pattern of Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. German packaging machines occupy a very important position in the world, accounting for about one-fifth of the world's total output value, most of which are exported. In the packaging of lollipops and chewing gum, German machinery has shown strong vitality. Japan’s food and packaging machinery sales rank second in the world, but most of them are specialized small and medium-sized enterprises, with more than 400, which are used in China but not exported. Italy is the world's fourth largest producer of packaging machinery and the second largest exporter. Its equipment is known for its flexibility and flexibility, and its multi-functional integration.

It is in the international market of such a master Fu Linli, three primary school students who can be visited from everywhere have grown into an international player occupying a place, and their foreign sales accounted for more than 50%. For more than 20 years, in a long and narrow valley-like track, I have gone all out to narrow the gap with foreign brands. Multinational confectionery manufacturers, such as Mondelez, Nestlé, Reckittsburgh, and Van Melle have their factories around the world to purchase Chinese confectionery packaging equipment. In the global market, Chinese manufacturers are gradually trying to compete with the top Italian and German packaging machinery manufacturers.

The changes of the times are obvious. People's tastes are changing, and machines must keep up. Consumer trends are the driving force of packaging innovation. In recent years, the candy market has undergone tremendous changes. Candy and chocolate are all entertaining, and its packaging style has also set off a new wave. Take a well-known flaky chewing gum in the domestic market as an example. In the past few years, its market share has declined significantly. Xuanmai, which was born in 2005, took over the banner. With its “delicious and lasting” chewing experience, it has become a young man in the world. A tidal storm is set off among the people. The tastes and fashions of these consumers have become a challenge to the packaging machine in the end.

Confectionery manufacturers are faced with increasingly dynamic and changing consumer demands. How to achieve fast and large-scale production of confectionery products developed by packaging machines is a huge problem. Due to the special packaging and packaging requirements of confectionery products, the design and manufacturing capabilities of packaging machine manufacturers are often a severe test.

Take Alps Sugar's packaging machine as an example. This is a drawer-style packaging that involves three packaging: folding (single sugar), boxing, and boxing. There are 10 candies, each of which is individually packaged, then assembled together and inserted into an outer package like a drawer. Domestic companies have carried out bold designs on the sealing and photosensitive surface, and completed a complex process combination, so that 4 machines can complete the packaging workload of replacing hundreds of workers before.

3/Engineer spirit: Don't do what is easy to do

The manufacturing characteristics of the packaging machine are not only small batches, multiple varieties, and not many orders. One product model can only produce more than 20 devices at most, or even a single one! Manufacturing-scale assembly lines are difficult to achieve here. Unable to organize effective large-scale production, a strong personal touch will be formed at the scene.

Sanke's factory is filled with this kind of engineer spirit. This is a metallic taste. As a machine manufacturer, I seem to be full of curiosity and exploration of mechanical parts. There is a whole set of philosophy in the enterprise: the performance of a piece of equipment is guaranteed by the overall system, not on a single work piece.

The candy packaging machine is a high-speed and precise mechanical equipment that can pack five to six hundred jelly beans per minute. Think about it, 10 gums per second. This kind of speed has very demanding requirements for motion control.

The candy packaging machine has more than 3,000 parts and components. The main product composition roughly includes two parts: mechanical and electrical. The latter has been using Schneider Electric products for many years, and 90% of the servo motors and control systems come from the company. As the mechanical part of the executive agency, it is up to the enterprise to solve it.

However, in the current entire supply chain environment, the thinking of precision manufacturing is still in the enlightenment stage, and external suppliers cannot guarantee to meet the entire design requirements. For example, for mechanical parts provided by an outsourcing manufacturer, the machining tolerance of each workpiece is always controlled at the lower limit. This means that the final assembly will produce a cumulative dimensional tolerance. The movement trajectory of the earliest designed mathematical model has lost its guarantee, which leads to the loss of product quality.

Therefore, Sanke decided to manufacture key components, such as connecting rods and transmission parts, by itself. There are many skilled operators on the factory site, who use gear grinding machines to process gears of different sizes. For the corresponding fixtures, in order to ensure the quality of processing, they are usually made by themselves.

Through in-depth observation of international packaging machinery, we found the devil in many details. For example, the protective cover of the packaging machine, as a sheet metal part, is not a core component, but only an auxiliary component of the equipment periphery. This seems simple, but if you want to take into account the user's habits, you need to redesign the sliding angle, taking into account the gap, flatness, delivery time, etc., and the requirements for irregular shapes are very high. However, the supplier did not care about these details, and the last three companies had to purchase multiple CNC bending machines by themselves for in-depth production, thus ensuring the humanized experience of the shield parts.

This style of German SMEs is noted in the book "Invisible Champions" in Germany. They seem to violate the professional division of labor, and many of the equipment are produced by themselves. A manufacturer of bathtubs and even heating furnaces make their own. This in-depth production method has formed an almost abnormal quality assurance. The harvest is naturally full.

To make a machine, it takes a long time to infiltrate. There is no metallic smell on the body, and it is difficult to develop a good machine.

At present, compared with the major manufacturers of candy packaging machines in Europe and the United States, the gap between domestic candy packaging machine manufacturers may not be in a single point of performance index, and the more important gap still comes from the understanding of the whole machine. The catching-up curve of Chinese machines is relatively close in terms of local points; but in terms of overall machine performance, we still need to learn. It is not only a single machine breakthrough, but a breakthrough in the entire production line including conveying materials.

Through years of cooperation with mainstream foreign confectionery manufacturers, the company has benefited most not only from the execution of the contract, but also from the impact on the overall thinking. In cooperation with Wrigley in 2015, the other party put forward dozens of rectification opinions on the packaging machine design proposal proposed by Sanke. At that time, these problems seemed to be blaming for faults. However, in the subsequent manufacturing process, it was discovered that these opinions contained very humane considerations.

Fighting against the master is to reset your mind and recharge your energy. The higher the user requirements, the sharper the thinking and the greater the progress of the enterprise. This is the only way for advanced manufacturing in China.

4/The movement of the times, accompanied by all the way

Melody is a musical candy that young people like very much, similar to a lollipop, similar to a toy, and can blow a whistle. The whistle airflow passes through the candy airway to match the position of the stick rod to form a whistle sound. The packaging of this special candy requires a redesign of the machine, using a precise machine servo control system, and the sealing heating must also use a non-contact heating method.

The tricky taste, the engineer's problem, this is a constant duet. The development of machinery requires better matching of electrical components.

In the era of mechanization, the packaging machine is a mechanical transmission mode: a mechanical main shaft provides machine power, and other transmission components are used to transmit power through mechanical linkages and gears. Most of the machine actions are controlled by logic, which requires the use of relays and buttons. Wait.

In the era of electrification and automation, the speed adjustment of packaging machines has become complicated. The original positioning is designed by a mechanical cam, and it takes a while to reset after the machine is started. And use the frequency converter to control the speed adjustment of the packaging machine, and use the electronic cam, and only need to adjust the parameters to set the machine speed. In the high-speed era, the evolution of the full-servo control system is required to realize multi-axis synchronous control through the high-speed motion control bus.

Schneider Electric provided a Modicon 262 PLC based on the Sercos III communication protocol, matched with Lexium28S servo drives, and loaded with the PacDrive high-end servo solution, which is very suitable for the synchronous control of multiple servo axes. In this way, it used to pack 200 candies per minute, but now it can do 500 or even 900 candies. Gorgeous fireworks are a combination of mechanical and electrical swords.

With the advent of the digital age and the acceleration of the electronic process, the speed of packaging machinery to digital is also quite rapid. Digital packaging machinery can not only provide greater output and stronger equipment flexibility, but also adds many new features, such as: remote maintenance, integration with the company's ERP system, and evaluation of production data.

As a fully automated equipment integrating light, machine, electricity, and gas, the degree of intelligence of candy packaging machines is getting higher and higher. In the space of the wrapping paper, the precise control of cutting knives, and the grasping of candy are all introducing intelligent Control technology to adapt to flexible requirements such as one machine with multiple functions, flexible adjustments, and mixed-line production. However, the higher the degree of intelligence of the machine, the more receiving information elements will be. Taking a certain type of candy packaging machine as an example, there are more than 50 locations where various photoelectric sensors need to be installed. And the controller with high-speed motion control bus logic and motion control, with IoT communication interface, can easily go to the cloud.

Confectionery factories have requirements for newly-purchased machines. For example, they need to be able to connect to other equipment and have a lightweight SCADA to facilitate a good connection with MES in the future. These are challenges for machine manufacturers. Packaging machinery manufacturers are trying to open up the data link of design and manufacturing to realize the support for the original industrial equipment of different brands. With the help of SCADA, more than 200 protocols can be supported. Through platform-based management, a variety of information can be obtained, and centralized management of the machine can be achieved. In the Sanke packaging machine project, Schneider Electric used its own pre-programmed template system to debug on-site, which only took three days.

In the scenario where machines are becoming more and more intelligent, packaging machinery manufacturers are trying to work with electrical parts suppliers to strictly organize and analyze the best operating experience and possible failure modes of related businesses into a knowledge base and failure modes The library guides the development of candy packaging machines to a higher digital and intelligent direction.

5/Notes: Accompanying Flight

Candies are joyful, and machines are painful. This is a precise division of labor. The candy factory needs to accurately identify the consumer's intentions and be sure that mass production can be profitable; the machine manufacturer concentrates on providing machines for the candy factory to take bold risks. And the core electrical parts suppliers need to ensure that the increasingly evolving mechanical systems fly together.

This company reminds people of many small and medium-sized enterprises in Japan. They rarely consider volume expansion, but are only obsessed with limited production capacity and guaranteed profits. Qualitative change, not quantitative change, is a clear stream in the mighty river of Chinese machine manufacturers.

From a general business perspective, Schneider Electric’s companionship does not seem to be cost-effective. This client is not big, and he can't afford to run with a marathon: he has been around for 20 years. But for Schneider Electric, this is a very meaningful typical customer. Its complex and changeable machine performance can also put forward many enlightening electrical requirements. More importantly, Sanke represents a sample of the rise of the backbone of Chinese manufacturing. If you look closely, you can see many invisible champions and companions who have achieved mutual achievement. A glow of partnership.

There are many interesting elements in the rise of Made in China, which are worthy of careful scrutiny. The sweet candy at the corner of the mouth has always been a memory of joy and glitz, and behind it is the ingenuity of generations of machines.