With advanced communication technology, stacklights can provide valuable information to operators and floor managers.
It’s a new world for real-time, point-of-use information. Stacklights and indicators can provide much more feedback to operators and plant floor managers than ever before.
Using colored lights, stacklights can convey a wide range of information. While red, yellow, green and blue are the standard stacklight colors, a variety of other colors can be used to indicate specific conditions and needs. It is important to develop a communication plan to clearly identifies what each color and flashing pattern represents.
Color overload can be a problem if not planned out properly. The best planning utilizes a dual color approach where colors are defined by personnel responsible and machine/process status at the point of use. An example would be yellow/blue indication wherein yellow = process slowdown and blue = line supervisor is responsible. This responsibility is clearly on the line supervisor to fix the slowdown at the point of indication. Flashing multiple colors is one method to dual color indication, but that has proven to be confusing. A much more intuitive approach is to segment the indicators based on your communication plan. Even small, point-of-use indicators can be segmented to exceed your goals.
We have also seen customers mixing their own colors to achieve a level of differentiation. This differentiation could be simple appearance preference or adherence to their corporate color identity. All very achievable with the new class of smart, LED based stacklights and indicators.
By providing continuously variable information, also referred to as analog information, stacklights can be used to indicate current level status in tanks, hoppers, feeders, flow racks and so on. Continuously variable information is also ideal to use in pacing for operators in manual assembly areas. They can quickly see how much time each individual person has for their process step. If someone is struggling, others can visibly see the situation and step in and help.
Another popular use is simply displaying that the machine is in idle state, like the spinning icon on computers. This would typically suspend all other forms of indication. Basically, it indicates the machine is not ready. The color indicators can be used as part of a communication plan to indicate the reason for the idle time and call for specific personnel to respond. As soon as the machine is ready, the indicators and stacklights revert to normal operations, just like your computer.
Stacklights can additionally provide operational status such as flow rates, pressure values and process speed.
To learn more about stacklights and indicators, visit www.balluff.com.
possible to define the segments as you see fit. It works by taking control of every LED element. Each SmartLight segment is comprised of four LED elements that can be controlled anyway you want (see Figure 1). For example, with the 3-segment SmartLight, you actually have 12 LED elements that you can organize any way you want. In Figure 2, we only use three LED elements per SmartLight segment, making it a four segment SmartLight. By using two LED elements we create six segments. Figure 3 is even more interesting, in this example we can see the size of the segments are sized by the intended users. Forklift Drivers need a larger light due to the distance and the fact that they are moving. Operators are closer than the forklift drivers, so their segment can be smaller, and maintenance can use the smallest segments because they are closest to the SmartLight when working on the machine.
in close proximity, usually within the work envelope of the operators. In the example shown, the SmartLight is used in a socket tray application. The SmartLight indicates to the operator which socket is required for a specific task. Inductive proximity sensors connected to an IO-Link Hub verify the correct socket was pulled. The photo is showing an All-Call (all lights lit). Here you can see the unique LED element grouping only available with the new Flexible mode. Other applications for operator guidance are essentially endless. There are no technical limitations to your creativity.
They utilize the electrical property of capacitance and the change of capacitance based on a change in the electrical field around the active face of the sensor.
Well, I have great news: since the introduction of our one of a kind SmartLights our customers shared so many novel uses of this intelligent LED tower light that it is hard to capture all of them in one blog. I would like to share some quick examples though. As this SmartLight has three programmable modes of operations; stack-light mode, run-light mode and level mode, there are several possibilities of showing different information about the system using the single SmartLight. In one application, when the system needs operator/maintenance intervention, the controller (PLC or computer) switches the SmartLight in run-light mode and utilizes different combinations of foreground and background colors to indicate what type of maintenance and what severity of maintenance is needed. In another application, our customer utilizes the level mode of operation to show how different stations are performing so that plant supervisor and pin-point the bottleneck of the process and provide needed support to ensure efficient operations in the plant. Furthermore, lots of these applications were done as an after-thought to the existing systems in place.
