Instrumentation and Control of an Industrial Sewing Station

The constant search for methods that allow the production processes improvement is a driving force for the development and integration of current technological solutions in systems which are, currently, still purely human based. It is in this context that the company Factoryplay comes forward with the challenge to upgrade its current sewing stations by adding a set of mechanization and automation solutions. This article documents the steps carried out to provide the current solution with the required technical attributes. In this paper, the instrumentation and actuation devised solutions, as well as the method employed to design an embedded PI controller, will be presented. The PI controller allows the closed-loop control of the station movement speed as a function of the sewing machine speed. The practical results obtained, regarding the dynamic response of the sewing station, are in line with the simulated ones.