General Information

Library Overview

In a Lexium™ MC multi carrier transport system, the carriers move from one processing station to the next station on the track.

The MulticarrierStation library provides general functions for controlling the handling of carriers with regard to the individual stations as well as the interaction between the stations.

By definition, stations do not have physical dimensions. Only the waiting position and the process position are related to physical positions on the track (see the example in the description of Standard Stations). The definition whether a carrier is in a station or not is a logical statement: When a carrier is logically handed over to the next station, the carrier is already assigned to the next station even though it may still be physically positioned between the waiting position and the process position of the present station. This can be the case if the carrier is blocked by carriers ahead in the moving direction.

The core element of the MulticarrierStation library is the function block FB_CoreStation. Independent of the type of a (physical) station, the function block FB_CoreStation provides the following general features:

  • adding carriers to a station

  • deleting carriers from a station

  • accessing the carriers assigned to the station

  • connecting to the next station

  • handing over carriers to the next station

  • providing an internally managed storage for the carriers assigned to the corresponding station

By inheritance, the function block FB_CoreStation allows you to create user-defined stations providing the general functions described above.

The inheritance concept offers the following features:

  • creation of user-defined stations with application-specific motion commands (for defining motion commands, refer to the Multicarrier library)

  • use of methods and properties without instantiation

  • combination of user-defined stations and standard stations provided by Schneider Electric (see Standard Stations)

For helping to demonstrate the functioning of standard stations and the creation of user-defined stations, refer to the Example project with application examples within the EcoStruxure Machine Expert software. For more information, refer to the Lexium™ MC multi carrier Example Guide.

Characteristics of the Library

The table indicates the characteristics of the library:

Characteristic

Value

Library name

MulticarrierStation

Company

Schneider Electric

Category

Application

Component

multi carrier

Default namespace

MCRS

Language model attribute

Qualified-access-only

Forward compatible library (FCL)

Yes (FCL)

NOTE: For this library, qualified-access-only is set. The POUs, data structures, enumerations, and constants have to be accessed using the namespace of the library. The default namespace of the library is MCRS.