Project Introduction: Solar cells convert solar energy into electricity through the photovoltaic effect, which is useful for many applications. Individual cells can be used for powering small devices, such as electronic calculators, while the larger photovoltaic arrays can generate a significant amount of renewable electricity. One machine builder in Taiwan integrated a wide range of Advantech products to help them create a solution for their complex solar cell loader/unloader project, which was aimed at reducing wiring costs and improving the reliability of their Ethernet communications infrastructure.

System Requirements: This customer wanted a solution to reduce their wiring costs and increase the reliability of their Ethernet communications between four subsystems. Their existing system was highly complicated, making maintenance and troubleshooting very difficult. Furthermore, they wanted to utilize a decentralized motion control solution, which led to the following requirements:

• High performance products with great reliability
• A simplified Ethernet infrastructure to reduce wiring
• The ability to integrate all production information into MES and CIM systems

Project Implementation:

UNO-3074: Intel Pentium M or Celeron M Embedded Automation Computer with 4 x PCI, 1 x PC Card Slot

PCI-1202U: 2-port AMONet RS-485 Master Card

AMAX-2752: 32-channel AMONet Isolated Digital Input Slave Module

AMAX-2754: 32-channel AMONet Isolated Digital Output Slave Module

AMAX-2241: 4-Axis AMONet Slave Module

System Description: In this solution, the AMAX-2241 was used to control the conveyer belt and the solar cell lifting mechanisms. Due to special customer concerns, we successfully created and provided a special junction cable to allow the AMAX-2241 to integrate with a Yamaha servo motor. The AMAX-2752/2754 was used to integrate all light indicators, switches and buttons.

The UNO-3074 is the main controller for this project. It communicates with the solar cell process controller and issues the motion control commands to the AMAX modules through the PCI-1202U. All the production information is also stored here for further integration into MES and CIM systems.

Conclusion: Leveraging the flexibility of a decentralized motion control system with Advantech products was the only way to meet the strict demands of this project. The new solar cell loader/unloader machine reduced the distribution panel's dimensions by 50% and reduced the overall wiring of the system by 37%. We were also able to increase performance 23% by simplifying the architecture of the system by replacing the outdated centralized motion control architecture with our decentralized motion control solution. This new system is also easier to maintain and troubleshoot. In the past, this customer needed to stop production and open the chassis of their machine to maintain the plug-in motion control and DAQ cards, which is not necessary any longer.