I have modelled a two way physics conveyor and put it in a layout for PLC code testing. My physics feeder in front of the conveyor is programmed to release the products to physics, the conveyor transports the product to the far end for machining and when the conveyor is reversed the product is returned to the feeder end. Works fine.
For visual representation of the manual feeding process i have tried to add a human resource. My physics products are fed to a ShelfBuffer, picked up by human and put on the conveyor using a “ToConveyor Process”. To make the human wait and pick up the product when it returns from machining i have tried “FromConveyor” and “ProcesNode”, but the problem seems to be, that the product is released from the flow, and the different process handling nodes can not “catch” a “free flowing” physics product. I have tried TransportIn property “Source” set at “Previous process” and “Component container”. Even though the physics conveyor takes care of the transport, I have tried to establish a “Conveyor transport” flow between the “ToConveyor” node and whatever node i tried as the “FromConveyor”. But the product is still not received when returning to the conveyor start.
Basically the question is: Can you make a physics product enter a flow without using a previous process?
Well, first of all Process Modeling functionality requires you to use PM product instances created from Product Types.
If you are using the Physics Feeder (Shape Feeder) component from eCat, it creates plain dynamic components, not product instances.
Maybe with this kind of trickery you could get somewhere:
Thanks for your reply. I think i did not explain my intentions too well. The physics components works just fine with the process flow. I don’t think it is the To Product Converter i need. I have attached a video with a brief explanation - I hope you have 5 minutes to see it and I hope it clarifies.
Thanks for the explanation.
I’m not really very familiar with the physics conveyors and transitioning between physics & normal containers, but if you can share the layout file I could test few potential solution ideas.
Basically I think you will need to have a component container that is separate from the physics conveyor and have the part transition between those. When the product arrives from the physics container to a normal container, the TransportIn statement should be able to pick it up if set to “From component container” mode.
This separate container could be a short non-physics 2-way conveyor, or maybe you could get away with just using the process node component but connected to the end of the physics conveyor, not on it.
I attach two layouts: “Boremaskine opg 03…” is the layout used in my video explanation, “Boremaskine opg 04…” is my latest scratch pad - sorry about the messy code - all prototyping
In the the “…04…” layout i have focused on the two process nodes on the table, and want to make “TableProcess2” able to pick up a free component. I have tried your approach with a short path into TableProcess2 and my latest experiment was to run the GraspAction wizard on the process node, add a volume sensor and modify the grasp script to ad an incoming component to its container. I believe i succeed in picking the component up. However, i think i do not understand “container” in depth, and are struggling to figure out how to have the flow process acknowledge the component in the grasp container?? The drop feeder, i have placed above the table, is an attemp to get a “free” component that was not brought to the table through a process flow (when the human puts a component from the flow on the table it is “destroyed because the output is not connected”). I just drag the components across to TableProcess2 with interactive mode. But then the challenge is, that the component is not part of the flow group 1, and when i try to have the human pick it up, the process does not seem to get activated, even though there is a component on TableProcess2.
I know…i am probably talking a lot of nonsense - sorry, i have just started with the process modelling
