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Alex OA avatar image
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Alex OA asked Alex OA commented

Time differences between Process Time and Staytime in Conveyor Stations.

Hello,

I am designing a conveyor with many differents stations. I just realised that the Process Time doesn't match with the Staytime that we see in the dashboard. As an example, the station SP5_2 has a process time of 48+4 seconds and the staytime seems to be 64 seconds.


I assume there is another time value that I am not taking into account. How can I assure that the pallet stops in the station only for the 48+4 processing seconds?

Thank you.

FlexSim 22.0.1
conveyorsystemprocesstimeconveyor station
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Alex OA avatar image Alex OA commented ·

Processconveyor.fsm

Also I just discovered that no matter what process time I choose in the station the pallets stop for multiples of 16. For instance, if its process time is 6 seconds it stays in the station for 16 seconds. If it's 27, 32 seconds. Can someone help me with this?

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1 Answer

Jason Lightfoot avatar image
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Jason Lightfoot answered Alex OA commented

The pallet is realeased after 52 seconds correctly, but then it has to wait for a dog to arrive.

eg:

  • 734.12 Arrive at station
  • 786.12 Process finishes at station
  • 798.xx Next dog arrives.

That means it's there for ~64 seconds.


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Alex OA avatar image Alex OA commented ·
Hi Jason,

Thanks for your answer. What is exactly a dog? The problem here is that in the real life conveyor, pallets move "one-by-one" (each position has 1.8m). So the pallet moves once the next conveyor piece is free.

If I remove the dog this distance is not respected and the pallets move all together. Is there any way that I could keep this distance while avoiding to affect the station's process time?

Thanks!

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Jason Lightfoot avatar image Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ Alex OA commented ·

The power and free dog is like a hook on a chain that is travelling around the conveyor. When it finds an item that can move it engages with the item and pulls it along. When the item cannot move it disengages and continues without an item (usually).

If you're just modelling an indexing conveyor then you can do that using the conveyor parameters:

1648468003869.png



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1648468003869.png (9.5 KiB)
Alex OA avatar image Alex OA Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ commented ·
Brilliant, thank you.
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