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Vacuum table setup question...


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Happy Monday, everyone.

First, the setup:

We use in-house designed custom acrylic vacuum fixtures to machine all of our plastic parts, a method that has worked near-perfectly for over 20 years. Every now and then, though, we have a troublesome job come through. The job we're running right now is a great example. It's a flat panel out of which we cut 12 pcs, and we run 3 panels per cycle. so, 3 x 12-ups. The rear (bottom) side of our vac fixtures have access grooves milled into them to allow vac to flow from the machine itself to the vac fixture. Then, on the top side of the fixture we have the actual part layout and corresponding vac hold-down grooves milled. So, basically, while the 12-up panels themselves are isolated from each other physically on the table, they all share the same bottom side vacuum access grooves...mainly because we only have one vac supply per machine so we just use one supply to feed all vac layouts. When one of the parts in any of the 12-up layouts shifts or loses vac hold, the most common result is the loss of 12 parts...and if the operator is tending to something else and doesn't notice it, we lose the entire 36 pc run. We've grown used to this and try to monitor that job more closely. This doesn't happen very often but it does happen, but I've finally grown sick of it so I had an idea...

Now, for the question:

I'd like to install some kind of solenoid in each of the 12-up layouts, with each solenoid running to a 3 port manifold that connects to the vac source. The purpose would be for any of the  solenoids to detect a sudden loss of vacuum and shut immediately, thus mitigating the loss of parts to a minimum of 12, thus saving 24 of them. (Once one shifts, they all shift due to the nature of the layout, which really can't be changed.)  So...does anyone have any experience with some kind of solenoid like this, and does anyone have a link or brand they would recommend? Yeah, I googled, and I've checked the usual MSC & McMaster, etc...but I'm not sure what I'm looking at when I find something that kinda aorts looks like what I want so I thought I'd check with some real people for their thoughts. Thank you for your time and patience. 

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On 10/25/2021 at 11:33 AM, Dontech said:

Happy Monday, everyone.

First, the setup:

We use in-house designed custom acrylic vacuum fixtures to machine all of our plastic parts, a method that has worked near-perfectly for over 20 years. Every now and then, though, we have a troublesome job come through. The job we're running right now is a great example. It's a flat panel out of which we cut 12 pcs, and we run 3 panels per cycle. so, 3 x 12-ups. The rear (bottom) side of our vac fixtures have access grooves milled into them to allow vac to flow from the machine itself to the vac fixture. Then, on the top side of the fixture we have the actual part layout and corresponding vac hold-down grooves milled. So, basically, while the 12-up panels themselves are isolated from each other physically on the table, they all share the same bottom side vacuum access grooves...mainly because we only have one vac supply per machine so we just use one supply to feed all vac layouts. When one of the parts in any of the 12-up layouts shifts or loses vac hold, the most common result is the loss of 12 parts...and if the operator is tending to something else and doesn't notice it, we lose the entire 36 pc run. We've grown used to this and try to monitor that job more closely. This doesn't happen very often but it does happen, but I've finally grown sick of it so I had an idea...

Now, for the question:

I'd like to install some kind of solenoid in each of the 12-up layouts, with each solenoid running to a 3 port manifold that connects to the vac source. The purpose would be for any of the  solenoids to detect a sudden loss of vacuum and shut immediately, thus mitigating the loss of parts to a minimum of 12, thus saving 24 of them. (Once one shifts, they all shift due to the nature of the layout, which really can't be changed.)  So...does anyone have any experience with some kind of solenoid like this, and does anyone have a link or brand they would recommend? Yeah, I googled, and I've checked the usual MSC & McMaster, etc...but I'm not sure what I'm looking at when I find something that kinda aorts looks like what I want so I thought I'd check with some real people for their thoughts. Thank you for your time and patience. 

Well if you wanted to get real slick you tie an emergency shut off to the solenoid and when it looses vacuum you don't loose anything. I would think an isolation process would be better with a 3 way valve. I would use the machine to move the 3 way valve to one area and machine it keeping all possible vacuum on the lot of 12 parts. Once done the machine then moves the switch to the 2nd position to machine the next 12 and then rinse repeat for the last 12. Now you keep max vacuum isolated to 12 parts. Make a Ring and turn off the spindle and drive the tool into the ring with a hole and then just move the machine from position one to position two and then from two to three. Want to think outside the box then do something like this and then should be good to go. Now if you use the emergency stop process then you shouldn't loose any parts and could still keep it running when thing are running good.

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  • 3 weeks later...
20 hours ago, Pgreenlaw said:

https://store.piersonworkholding.com/vacuum-level-monitor.html

 

PIERSON MAKES THIS WHICH CAN TIE INTO YOUR E-STOP/FEED HOLD CIRCUIT AND STOP MACHINE WHEN VACUUM DROPS BELOW A CERTAIN THRESHOLD, MAYBE THIS WOULD BE AN OPTION FOR YOU?

Weelllll ... maybe. Thank you for the suggestion. 👍

It sort of does what I'm looking for (preventing part loss when vacuum drops out) but my goal is to be able to shut vacuum off to any one of the three 12-up clusters automatically without needing to stop the program so we can at least finish the cycle. The cycle time for this 3x 12-up panels is pretty long (about an hour per cycle) so needing to stop and restart is problematic.

Basically, what we have is a 40" x 20" vacuum table in each of our machines. This table has one main vacuum feed line running into the vacuum table which provides vacuum to the entire table at once. There really isn't any way to isolate layouts from each other on a table without a lot of extra vac-line plumbing and a system of shut off valves which would have to be monitored by the operator for the entire cycle. I don't want to chain my operators to a machine for that long as they have multiple tasks going on at the same time.

Instead, what I would like to do is install a 1-to-3 manifold inside the machine. The vac input would run into the 1 side while a separate vac output would run out of each of the ports on the 3 side to provide vac to each of the three 12-up layouts. I'd like to install an automatic shutoff solenoid in each of the output lines between the manifold and the table itself. The solenoids would be powered by the machine power supply somehow (which I would have a HFO tech take care of) and any one of the three solenoids sensing a vac-loss would be able to shut supply off to that 12-up layout while the machine continues to finish the rest of the cycle. 

So what I'm really looking for is a solenoid or some other device that can handle that. Preferrably small so they don't intrude into the working space inside the machine enclosure.

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