Belt Receive

Description

This project was done for Quad/Tech. In general, magazine finishing machines use lugged conveyor belts to move magazines down the line. The lugs provide a very precise method of tracking the location of each magazine and where used to trigger events such as caliper checks. Some processes, however required that a belt be used to move the books. These where used for folded mailers. Up until this time, the two methods had been used seperatly. Either a machine was lug driven (custodial) or belt driven (non custodial). On a belt driven machine, cameras were required to trigger events. The goal of this project was to allow a custodial section to run into a non custodial section.

Challenges

This was an extremely challenging problem. The entire infrastructure was build with the two different machine times in mind. There were no allowances for using a different type of tracking on either. Custodial systems required an encoder to signal interrupt that woke up process along the line while non custodial section used camera to trigger events but otherwise had not tracking. A number of people where required to make the modifications neccesary to get this project working.

Results

This was a successful project and was used in plants in Virginia to perform print on folded mailers.