CrossSlidingCar

The cross-sliding car facilitates quick, easy and cost-effective cross transport if other materials handling equipment obstructs the way. It is mainly used for moving the conveyed parts from one conveyor onto another one.

To add the Cross-sliding Car to the Class Library, click Manage Class Library > Libraries > Tools > Cross-sliding Car on the Home ribbon tab.

We modeled the CrossSlidingCar based on the Track as an application object to be able to fully use the curve property of the track. The Transporter, called Vehicle here, which transports the parts, is an integral part of the CrossSlidingCar ( CSC). The Vehicle makes extensive use of the loading space of type Conveyor. It designates an active length-oriented loading space similar to a conveyor being part of the loading space, which transports the loaded parts forwards or backwards. We use sensors on the cross-sliding car to determine the position onto which the parts are placed.

We modeled the dialogs of the objects with the object Dialog. The windows of the objects do not use the standard Siemens PLM theme, but your Windows theme.

To assign the object another name or a label, click it with the right mouse button and select Rename.

The figure above shows a typical case in which to use a cross-sliding car. Parts arrive from the left-hand side and are to be distributed to the conveyors on the right-hand side according to their attribute Destination. An arriving part registers in the order list of the CrossSlidingCar by calling the method partHere. Within this method the part enters itself into the list of transport orders of the cross-sliding car by using the method transportOrder.

The list of transport orders can contain several orders. If you do not enter a control Strategy, the CrossSlidingCar processes the order list in the sequence in which orders were entered.

When the order is processed, the CrossSlidingCar first moves to the Conveyor at which it is to pick the part up. There it waits until the respective part is ready to leave. This way a transport order can be created before the part has reached the end of the Conveyor.

As soon as the part has moved onto the CrossSlidingCar, it drives to the target conveyor of the part. As soon as it arrived there, the CrossSlidingCar first waits for the duration of the damping time until the Vehicle has been completely steadied. Only then the transported part moves onto the target conveyor, which moves it on. After the part has completely left the CrossSlidingCar, it processes the next order.

If there is no destination defined at the part, the CrossSlidingCar uses the destination defined in the transport order. When loading several parts with different destinations, the CrossSlidingCar first drives to the destination defined in the transport order, then to the destination defined in the parts loaded.

The CrossSlidingCar can transport several parts. To make it do so, enter a value greater than 1 into the text box Capacity. Note that the width of the CrossSlidingCar has to be greater than or equal to the overall length of the parts to be loaded. If several parts are to be loaded, the parts can have different targets. The CrossSlidingCar then approaches the targets in the sequence in which the parts were loaded.

To enter the branch conveyors to be serviced into the table of the Open List of Attached Conveyors, drag them onto the CrossSlidingCar and drop them there. This also determines the position, left or right, of the conveyor in relation to the CrossSlidingCar. This is important because the CrossSlidingCar has to determine the direction in which the transported part drives onto the loading space or off of the loading space, either backwards or forwards. This process also determines the target position to which the CrossSlidingCar has to drive to load or unload the part respectively. During the initialization phase of the model Plant Simulation also creates the sensors at the computed positions. It offsets the positions of the sensors by half the width of the cross-sliding car so that the Vehicle is located at the correct position when the sensor is activated.

When a component in the simulation model fails, the Vehicle stops immediately. It continues and finishes its transport order once the failure is repaired.

The end of a shift does not directly affect the CrossSlidingCar. It indirectly affects the CrossSlidingCar when no additional transport order is entered.

Deleting the currently transported part cancels the current transport order. If the order list contains another order, the CrossSlidingCar processes this order. If no other order is waiting, CrossSlidingCar stops until another order arrives.

For simple driving order for the CrossSlidingCar you can move a part with the command move(CrossSlidingCar). You have to set the attribute Destination for the MU so that the portal knows the destination for the MU. The portal then drives to the part, picks it up and transports it to the designated destination. The move command always applies to the first portal.

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