Implementation of an automatic machine demo with B&R’s ACOPOS6D

The world of industrial automation has changed a lot in the last years, with machine-builders that always look for innovative technologies that are able to simplify the production process by also introducing new degrees of flexibility, which is the focus of the newest trend in this sector, in particular the possibility to change on the fly the size of batches to produce products different in size and shape in order to meet the high production standards that rise continuously nowadays. This thesis project is the summary of a journey in the B&R Industrial Automation company, one of the world leader automation suppliers, with a focus on its newest and most revolutionary technology: ACOPOS6D. The first part is dedicated to a description of the company, its traditional products and Automation Studio, the software development tool on which every automation application can be easily implemented, with a focus on the possibility to manage a very wide range of different devices. The next part of this thesis highlights the three transportation systems developed by B&R that exploit the magnetic force in order to grant an unprecedented flexibility and compactness to an automatic machine, with a focus on their advantages with respect to traditional transportation systems like conveyor belts and the difference between the use of magnetic attraction and magnetic levitation. The last part of the project, instead, is focused on an application developed on the ACOPOS6D system during the internship in order to highlight the potentialities of the system, extract some useful data on its functioning and show that an actual automation process is implementable with the system, with high degrees of robustness and long term reliable functioning. The implemented application is developed in the deeply analyzed Template framework, a new standard for automatic machines development proposed by B&R.