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night avatar image
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night asked Jason Lightfoot commented

How to transport using multiple cranes?

I am trying to replicate the process in the simulation as how it is done in the real-world. Crane 1 would transport the item from a queue, align up with crane 2 and transfer the item over to crane 2 for crane 2 to transport it off to a separator. Is it possible to do so? If not what should I do?

1693469210045.png

FlexSim 23.1.2
cranemultiple cranes
1693469210045.png (171.2 KiB)
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Jeanette F avatar image Jeanette F ♦♦ commented ·
Hello @night

Is there a location that crane 1 puts down the item for crane 2 to then pick up the item? Or are you saying they pass the object in the air?

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Jason Lightfoot avatar image Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ commented ·

Hi @night, was Jonah K's answer helpful? If so, please click the "Accept" button at the bottom of their answer. Or if you still have questions, add a comment and we'll continue the conversation.

If we haven't heard back from you within 3 business days we'll auto-accept an answer, but you can always comment back to reopen your question.

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1 Answer

Jonah K avatar image
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Jonah K answered Jason Lightfoot commented

You can use process flow to make a task sequence in which one crane will hand-off the item to the next crane. This will work easiest if you have one meeting point. In this model, I used a station named MeetingPoint, floating in the air, and just had the cranes Load/Unload/Travel to it. You could also use a BasicFR as the meeting point, and you could also make it invisible if you wanted.

CraneHandoff.fsm

If you want a more arbitrary meeting point, you may have to do some calculations before the travel task to get the location. Perhaps a Load, Custom Code where you calculate the meeting point, then two Travel tasks for both cranes to travel to the meeting point, then MoveObject to Crane2.


cranehandoff.fsm (144.2 KiB)
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night avatar image night commented ·

With Crane.fsmI am using the first method, the cranehandoff, but not sure why the cranes are not working? attached is my program.

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with-crane.fsm (9.4 MiB)
Jonah K avatar image Jonah K ♦ night commented ·

In your process flow activities, you need to define your task executers correctly (token.resource / crane1, token.resource2 / crane2). In order to get a more smooth transition, rather than loading and unloading the items into the station, I had it load crane1, both move to the same position, then move the item to crane2. Then I had it unload the item to Work bay 1, to get you started.

with-crane_JK.fsm

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with-crane-jk.fsm (9.4 MiB)
night avatar image night Jonah K ♦ commented ·

1695269992934.png

On top of the program that you had helped me with, I wanted to add in extra unloading bays. To do that, I used the decide module, sending the token to random connectors, I set 3, each unload for each bay. Problem now is that, for some reason the unloading stops after one unload, it doesn't continue the next unloading.
And i would like to use the crane to send the item to the sink, so can I presume that the steps would just be a reverse of the unloading? So to do this I have to remove sink and add the steps behind the release?
If i would like to use operators for this process, is there any difference whether i use the people activity sets versus using operators to transport in the workbench?
with-crane-jk.fsm

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with-crane-jk.fsm (9.4 MiB)
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