Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of machinery have a strong incentive to reduce the cost of their purchased product content on each machine in order to increase profitability over volume machine production. For Metrics, LLC, in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., this has always meant developing everything in house, including drivers for communicating to its programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
The drivers developed by Metrics would often include just the functionality thought to be needed at development time, only to have to come back later to add capabilities and incur additional cost and testing. Oftentimes there would be performance issues, because the software development team had to spend its efforts on many different types of software development, preventing team members from becoming experts in communications.
On its latest line of machinery, Metrics chose to go the route of using an OPC platform for communications, to leverage the communications expertise available in off-the-shelf OPC server products. Metrics selected the TOP Server OPC Server from Software Toolbox, in Matthews, N.C., to interface to its Automation Direct PLCs, because of its depth of capabilities combined with development components from Software Toolbox to integrate OPC with its Visual Basic application.
Leverage process knowledge
"Software Toolbox brings us the entire package—the OPC server, an OPC Data ActiveX that makes connections to our VB human-machine interface (HMI) system easy to set up, its Industrial Gadgets ActiveX, which allowed us to enhance the look of our user interface, and the technical support expertise to show us how to bring it all together," says Scott Gee, controls engineer at Metrics. Gee adds, "By leveraging the tools and expertise offered by Software Toolbox, we were able to reduce our development time significantly and focus our development energies in the areas that encapsulate our proprietary knowledge of our process, not reinvent the wheel."
Metrics LLC specializes in designing and manufacturing large-volume mold products. The company builds custom-designed injection molding machinery used to make large-volume structural foam parts for a variety of industries. Its systems are unique because they can produce large-volume parts very quickly. The small machines start at 2,500 ton clamp force and go up from there, can have a rapid three-second cycle time and are capable of handling 12 tons of end product a day.
Structural foam parts are rapidly growing in use in institutional buildings such as health care facilities, due to new regulations expected in 2007 that will ban wood and gypsum because they can harbor moisture and bacteria. Structural foam is physically stronger than many solids, does not deflect like solids, is thermally stable and is lighter than materials with comparable properties.
Adds Toshi Ghalebi, president of Metrics, "One of the key determinants for us in this decision was the responsiveness of Software Toolbox to our specific business requirements. They listened to what we were trying to accomplish and were able to deliver the software components we needed quickly and at a very affordable cost. Now we have a solution that has our custom touch, at an affordable price that meets our per unit cost requirements, yet significantly leverages the benefits of off-the-shelf software. To top it all off, their support has been outstanding throughout the entire process."
For more information on OPC solutions from Software Toolbox, visit www.softwaretoolbox.com/opc.
