History<\/h2><\/h2><\/div>AXIS Automation has been in business for 40 years. They are in their 5th location, outgrowing the other 4 locations. They are currently located in Hartland, WI, just outside of Milwaukee. AXIS started as a Job Shop serving local businesses like Rayovac, Trek Bicycle, and Oscar Mayer. Seeing a real need for custom machines, they started building automation equipment and that quickly became a major part of their business. Around 20 years ago they started migrating into the automation for food processing and today, they focus exclusively on the food industry.<\/p>\n
AXIS has used Horner products from the beginning and have always worked with Powermation to obtain and service those products. Horner provides a very compact package that is full-featured. There are many small pieces of automation equipment where the control cabinet ends up larger than the machine. Having a small footprint with an integral HMI helps keep the cabinet size in check.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Challenge \/ Opportunity<\/h2><\/h2><\/div>Mike Frazier, Vice President at AXIS Automation, and his team have been working on a proprietary control system for PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) capable spray equipment that will be incorporated into their systems. While it made sense for several reasons, to do the embedded design and building of the individual nodes in the system, it did not make sense to do the HMI and automation logic when many platforms already exist. They chose the Horner OCS line of controllers because of all the peripherals and features built into their controllers.<\/p>\n
AXIS\u2019 embedded hardware consists of individual cards (nodes) on a module backplane, making their system scalable and giving it a small footprint. Each node has a processor and a high-current switching device to eliminate the need for an external solid-state relay. Each gun is capable of operating at an independent frequency and duty cycle. Process parameters are uploaded to each node via Modbus RS485. Each node also has a digital input that is daisychained to all nodes through the backplane, and used for cycle start\/ stop. This makes the cycle initiation in real-time and not dependent on the RS485 network. Using just one output on the OCS will start and stop all spray guns that have been programmed with a recipe uploaded over Modbus. Using a digital output for cycle start\/stop greatly reduces demands on the network and the associated program tasks. Mr. Frazier updates nodes only once every 500mS with recipe changes and never suffers a lag with cycle initiation.<\/p>\n<\/div>
AXIS Automation has been in business for 40 years. They are in their 5th location, outgrowing the other 4 locations. They are currently located in Hartland, WI, just outside of Milwaukee. AXIS started as a Job Shop serving local businesses like Rayovac, Trek Bicycle, and Oscar Mayer. Seeing a real need for custom machines, they started building automation equipment and that quickly became a major part of their business. Around 20 years ago they started migrating into the automation for food processing and today, they focus exclusively on the food industry.<\/p>\n
AXIS has used Horner products from the beginning and have always worked with Powermation to obtain and service those products. Horner provides a very compact package that is full-featured. There are many small pieces of automation equipment where the control cabinet ends up larger than the machine. Having a small footprint with an integral HMI helps keep the cabinet size in check.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Challenge \/ Opportunity<\/h2><\/h2><\/div>Mike Frazier, Vice President at AXIS Automation, and his team have been working on a proprietary control system for PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) capable spray equipment that will be incorporated into their systems. While it made sense for several reasons, to do the embedded design and building of the individual nodes in the system, it did not make sense to do the HMI and automation logic when many platforms already exist. They chose the Horner OCS line of controllers because of all the peripherals and features built into their controllers.<\/p>\n
AXIS\u2019 embedded hardware consists of individual cards (nodes) on a module backplane, making their system scalable and giving it a small footprint. Each node has a processor and a high-current switching device to eliminate the need for an external solid-state relay. Each gun is capable of operating at an independent frequency and duty cycle. Process parameters are uploaded to each node via Modbus RS485. Each node also has a digital input that is daisychained to all nodes through the backplane, and used for cycle start\/ stop. This makes the cycle initiation in real-time and not dependent on the RS485 network. Using just one output on the OCS will start and stop all spray guns that have been programmed with a recipe uploaded over Modbus. Using a digital output for cycle start\/stop greatly reduces demands on the network and the associated program tasks. Mr. Frazier updates nodes only once every 500mS with recipe changes and never suffers a lag with cycle initiation.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Mike Frazier, Vice President at AXIS Automation, and his team have been working on a proprietary control system for PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) capable spray equipment that will be incorporated into their systems. While it made sense for several reasons, to do the embedded design and building of the individual nodes in the system, it did not make sense to do the HMI and automation logic when many platforms already exist. They chose the Horner OCS line of controllers because of all the peripherals and features built into their controllers.<\/p>\n
AXIS\u2019 embedded hardware consists of individual cards (nodes) on a module backplane, making their system scalable and giving it a small footprint. Each node has a processor and a high-current switching device to eliminate the need for an external solid-state relay. Each gun is capable of operating at an independent frequency and duty cycle. Process parameters are uploaded to each node via Modbus RS485. Each node also has a digital input that is daisychained to all nodes through the backplane, and used for cycle start\/ stop. This makes the cycle initiation in real-time and not dependent on the RS485 network. Using just one output on the OCS will start and stop all spray guns that have been programmed with a recipe uploaded over Modbus. Using a digital output for cycle start\/stop greatly reduces demands on the network and the associated program tasks. Mr. Frazier updates nodes only once every 500mS with recipe changes and never suffers a lag with cycle initiation.<\/p>\n<\/div>
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