Caron Engineering offers an intuitive status light system designed to increase shop productivity.
"A typical status light essentially has three color indicators that tell you whether the (1) machine is running, (2) in feed hold or (3) alarm," said a company spokesperson. "In a typical machine shop, an operator will continually check each machine in a cell to view the status of the part program to determine when it will need attention. This requires manual labor and typically results in excessive machine downtown, as machines unavoidably sit idle waiting for an operator to check the status.
"The CEI Smart Light system is an effective solution for CNC machine status reporting, especially in larger machine shops. It provides easy assessment of a part's progress on a CNC program. With a quick glance, an operator can see the part's progress on all the machines in a cell, eliminating the need to periodically walk over and check the control on each machine."
The Caron Engineering controller communicates with Fast Process Data (Balluff) Smart Lights. The light tower contains 20 LEDs, which can be lit in succession to show the status of the part program. The light can be divided into two to five segments and each segment can be a different color. Segments can be solid color, blink, flash or all at the same time. In addition to the visual light indicator, there is a programmable audible alarm that can be set to notify the operator when the cycle is complete.
Indicating cycle status on a part program is only one application for the CEI Smart Light System. The CEI Smart Light has 1,000 available modes with six standard color options, plus the option to create a user-defined color. The numerous color and mode options, combined with direct CNC communication to command the light, allow the user to program visual and audible alerts for any machine status.
The configuration software has a recipe builder to pre-configure different light modes using the multiple color options and audible alarm. Once modes are configured, the CNC program commands these modes (light configurations), through macro programming, to indicate any status or notification. The software has a live demo mode for testing all light configurations before programming recipes.
"With the CEI Smart Light System, machines will spend less time idle, thereby increasing productivity. The operators will always know what their machines are doing," said the spokesperson.
For more information contact:
Caron Engineering, Inc.
1931 Sanford Rd.
Wells, ME 04090
207-646-6071
marketing@caroneng.com
www.caroneng.com