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The Z-World BL1600 is housed in the cylinder case at the left end of the Pogo®
actuator. |
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| The Skins Game |
| Product: BL1600 Little-G |
An aerospace firm wanted to increase production of their fuselage "skins" used on Boeing
747 aircraft. A single fixture was needed that could hold the dozens of different skins
required to build a 747. The existing system required a large storage area for over 100
unique tooling fixtures. A new fixture was designed to be rapidly configurable and hold
two parts simultaneously.
Several requirements were set in preproduction of this system. The system needed to address
and position up to 1320 Pogo® actuators individually over an RS-485 network and to
operate reliably 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system needed high-powered outputs
to control valves for air and vacuum lines directly and it needed to interface with a custom
board having positioning and vacuum transducers accurate to ±0.002".
To satisy these requirements, designers used Z-World's BL1600 for each actuator and Dynamic
C® , Z-Worlds proprietary development software. The new fixture holds up to 1320 actuators
called Pogos®, each one controlled by a Z-World BL1600. Together, the Pogo® actuators
position to varying heights and apply suction to pre-formed aluminum panels, acting as a
"bed of nails" to hold the correct contour of the panels. The panels are then cut, trimmed
and drilled in minutes instead of hours. An industrial computer running Windows NT oversees
the entire system, operating multiple BL1600s over an RS-485 network.
The BL1600 was programmed using Dynamic C to provide multitasking real-time operating
environment. The BL1600 in each actuator is responsible for successfully completing its
required operations and reporting data to the system controller.
Why Z-World?
- The BL1600's PLCBusTM allowed the addition of a second board to communicate
with the positioning transducer.
- The built-in RS-485 port provided a simple 2-wire net work for connecting 1320 Pogo
actuators together.
- The Dynamic C® software package and BL1600's RS-232 interface were ideal for quick,
efficient development work.
- The BL1600's reliability was important to the continuous operation of the system.
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