The dc motor and its role in suture inspection

摘要

PharmSouth's new machine inspects the sutures for defects; these are common as the sutures are made up from lengths of braided or twisted polymer, which can break, stick out or bunch up, leading to suture breakages and discarded product, maxon technical sales engineer, Mark Gibbons was in at the beginning of the machine building project and suggested PharmSouth used a maxon EPOS2 50/5 controller and utilise the dual encoder mode of operation to solve the issue with the elasticity of the suture. The machine can inspect sutures ranging in diameter from 0.2mm to 1.5mm at speeds of up to 150m/min. The suture is reeled on an off-wind spool, then threaded via a three-axis inspection head, over a measuring encoder wheel. From here it passes through a three-axis diameter gauge, beneath a camera, to a knotting station (used to mark out any flaw positions with a knot) and it is finally wound on a take-up spool. The inspection head provides two digital signals: 'major flaw' or 'minor flaw'.