Customized PAC for tobacco intelligent sorting lines
During the intelligent manufacturing upgrade of the tobacco industry, automated intelligent sorting lines impose extremely high requirements on product surface color recognition, physical parameter inspection and high-efficiency sorting. As the core control and computing unit of the entire production line, the customized PAC (Programmable Automation Controller) from HWAINTEK integrates high-performance computing, real-time motion control and multi-channel vision processing capabilities. It enables fully automatic unmanned operation of cigarettes and cigarette trays from feeding to sorting, guaranteeing high-speed, high-precision and highly stable production.
Automatic Feeding & Material Handling Stage: Efficient Separation of Cigarette Trays and Cigarettes
This stage realizes automatic raw material supply and preliminary processing, serving as the fundamental link for continuous and stable operation of the whole line.
Typical process steps:
Automatic cigarette tray feeding: Automatically identify and convey cigarette trays to deliver uninterrupted material supply.
Automatic cigarette separation: Precisely separate cigarettes from trays without manual intervention, reducing artificial damage to products.
Material conveying & positioning: High-speed conveying systems cooperate with vision cameras and sensors to achieve accurate workpiece positioning.
The customized HWAINTEK PAC acts as the motion control hub here. Equipped with a powerful real-time kernel and abundant motion axis interfaces, it synchronously drives multiple servo drives, robots and conveying mechanisms to deliver precise coordination at high takt rates. Its highly reliable design supports 24/7 non-stop operation, complying with strict output and cleanliness standards of the tobacco industry.
Intelligent Identification & Automatic Sorting Stage: Multi-Dimensional Quality Inspection and Rejection
As the core inspection and decision-making section, this stage completes full-scan product analysis and intelligent sorting.
Key process steps:
Multi-dimensional intelligent identification: On-line physical measurement (length, diameter, weight), structural inspection, intelligent color recognition and multi-angle surface defect detection.
Comprehensive judgment & decision-making: Rapid quality evaluation through fusion of multi-sensor and vision data.
Automatic sorting & rejection: Precisely sort out and eliminate defective products automatically to ensure consistent high-quality output.
The customized HWAINTEK PAC integrates robust edge computing performance, supporting real-time image processing and AI inference algorithms for multiple industrial cameras, while executing complex logic control and motion planning. Its multi-core high-performance architecture enables millisecond-level closed-loop cycles of inspection, judgment and actuation, greatly improving sorting accuracy and overall line efficiency.
Typical Topology Architecture of PAC Controllers for Tobacco Intelligent Sorting Lines
Centered on the customized HWAINTEK PAC, the topology forms an integrated "Perception-Control-Actuation" framework:
Perception Layer: Multiple industrial cameras, laser sensors, weighing and physical measuring devices connect to the controller via GigE, EtherCAT and other communication interfaces.
Control & Computing Layer: The PAC runs a real-time operating system, motion control programs and AI vision algorithms to implement data fusion, intelligent decision-making and synchronized motion coordination.
Actuation & Management Layer: Drives servo systems and sorting actuators, and connects upward to MES via industrial Ethernet to realize production data collection, full traceability and remote monitoring.
This architecture ensures efficient, stable and fully unmanned operation covering the entire tobacco sorting workflow, from automatic feeding to intelligent sorting.
Conclusion
Boasting high integration, powerful real-time control and edge AI computing performance, the customized HWAINTEK PAC serves as the core control unit for automated intelligent tobacco sorting lines. It helps tobacco manufacturers achieve fully unmanned automatic production, drastically boosting sorting efficiency, product quality consistency and overall intelligence, and supporting the intelligent manufacturing transformation and upgrading of the tobacco industry.