DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATIC SORTING CONVEYOR BELT USING PLC

The automatic sorting process is used to differentiate the products manufactured in an industry to further direct it towards packaging according to height. In the paper, products are compared using diffused beam type photo-electric sensor. In the paper the system based on conveyor belt model to sort the objects which are of ideal selected height is described. The control strategy for automating the sorting process which was earlier done by manual labour involving slow, inaccurate and erroneous outputs is implemented through programmable logic controller (PLC) as a solution to all these problems. In the paper, development of ladder logic program in MicroWIN software for the PLC which operates the pneumatic actuator for sorting the objects is described. It is found that HMI and SCADA using softwares WinCC Basic in TIA Portal and WinCC Professional respectively makes the model more user friendly and efficient with controls and trends on a single screen.