In today’s world, there is a high demand for surgical face mask machines and thus growing the requirement for automation systems. We have different types of face mask-making machines available in the market based on manual, semi-automatic, and fully-automatic control systems.
The Wecon company is an expert in the field of industrial automation products and solutions. They designed advanced fully-automatic face mask machines using PLC, HMI, and Servos.
Overview of Mask Machine
The main equipment of a mask-making machine is an automatic plane mask machine and mask packing machine.
There are 3 types of mask-making machines available and they are 1st generation machine, 2nd generation machine, and 3rd generation machine.
The pictures are shown below.
This article mainly focuses on the PLC-based mask-making third-generation machine using Wecon PLC and HMI.
The following are the different parts of the face mask machine.
Main Body of Face Mask Machine
Here mainly system works on the materials of the face mask. All the required raw materials will be collected.
The press material slice, that is to say, fold, press, and cut the non-woven fabric into one piece.
The main parts of this system are a PLC, HMI, VFD drive, photoelectric sensor, relay, and contactor.
| Item | Model | Qty | Description |
| PLC | LX3V-1412MT | 1 | 14 Inputs, 12 Outputs |
| HMI | PI3070i | 1 | RS485 |
Distributing Mechanism of the Face Mask
Pressing slice: feeding, that is, turning over the mask body after pressing the slice and sending it to the next stage for processing.
The below equipment is used for this process.
| Item | Model | Qty | Description |
| PLC | LX3V-2424MT | 1 | 24 Inputs, 16 Outputs |
| HMI | PI3070i | 1 | RS485 |
Face Mask Elastic Belt
After pressing and cutting the face mask body, the elastic belt is respectively welded/stitched on the left and right sides of the mask body and then automatically wrapped.
The first generation face mask system is mainly composed of one servo and multiple cylinders; the third generation system is mainly composed of one servo and three steps to replace some cylinder functions.
The required components for this process are mentioned in the below table.
| Item | Model | Qty | Description |
| PLC | LX3V-3624MT | 2 | 36 Inputs, 24 Outputs |
| IO Module | L3V-16EYT | 2 | |
| HMI | PI3070i | 2 | RS485 |
| Servo | VD1-075SE1G | 2 | 750W |
| Item | Model | Qty | Description |
| PLC | LX3V-3624MT | 2 | 36 Inputs, 24 Outputs |
| HMI | PI3070i | 2 | RS485 |
| Servo | VD1-075SE1G | 2 | 750W |
Mask Packing Machine
The equipment is mainly used for the packaging of finished face masks.
According to different feeding methods, the system can be applied to the machine with a chain and push plate as the feeding shaft and the automatic material handling machine with a belt as the feeding shaft.
By collecting the blanking signal of the respirator packaging machine, and online production with the respirator machine, a respirator packaging production line can be formed, which can greatly reduce the number of workers who place the packaging manually (at present, most of the control systems on the market can only realize the single machine function).
The below table shows the required equipment.
| Item | Model | Qty | Description |
| PLC | LX3V-1616MT4H | 1 | 16 Inputs, 16 Outputs, 4 High-Speed Outputs |
| HMI | PI3070i | 1 | RS485 |
| Servo | VD1-075SE1G | 3 | 750W |
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