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CPL asked Ryan Clark commented

Power and Free Conveyor getting stuck

Hi, I am using a power and free conveyor to simulate a baggage tilting tray sortation loop. However its getting stuck after short time. Are the space padding settings interfering with the dog interval or something? I also tried to increase the curve radius and changed side transfers time to zero to avoid stoppages, but it is still happening. Can anyone give me a hint, what's going wrong? My actual system has over 80 chutes on 2 large sorters, so need to make sure it runs without getting stuck. Thanks for your help, Kat

Example Sorter Chute Tipping.fsm

FlexSim 22.0.0
power and free conveyorpadding
example-sorter-chute-tipping.fsm (135.5 KiB)
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Ryan Clark avatar image Ryan Clark commented ·

Hi @Capacity P, was Ryan Clark's answer or Felix Mohlmann's comments 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.

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Ryan Clark answered Felix Möhlmann commented

Hi @Capacity P,

I modified your model, and it doesn't seem to get stuck anymore. The main change I made was in the settings on the conveyors. As shown in the image below, I changed the values for the Stopping Space, Moving Space, and Entry Space. It seemed to be most helpful when I increased the values for Moving/Entry, and decreased the value for Stopping Space. The image shows what values I settled on for all of the conveyors in the loop. If you run into this problem again, I would recommend fiddling with those values until it works.

screenshot-2022-02-04-155117.png

I also made a small modification to the decision point on the entry conveyor since items were sometimes going to the incorrect chute based on their color. I just added some code that changes the "row" label on the item based on what color it changed to.

example-sorter-chute-tipping-rc.fsm

I hope this helps! Let us know if you have further questions!


screenshot-2022-02-04-155117.png (441.0 KiB)
example-sorter-chute-tipping-rc.fsm (133.0 KiB)
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CPL avatar image CPL commented ·
Thanks so much @Ryan Clark, yes I realized playing around with the moving space changes the behavior, but now with the new settings unfortunately it occupies only every 2nd slot, so I have only half of the belt capacity. I can carry a bag within each 1.2 m window, so my spacing needs to be less than the fixed interval space to be able to occupy every slot at the entry transfer. Due to curved conveyors the stoppages keep occurring whenever all slots are filled...
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Felix Möhlmann avatar image Felix Möhlmann CPL commented ·

I've had some success with using motors to sync the dog positions as well as setting the conveyors to be accumulating. Since the items should never stop on the conveyor this shouldn't impact the functionality as far as I can tell.

example-sorter-chute-tipping-motor.fsm

I also adjusted the start and end positions of the long conveyor sections to exactly align with each other as to have perfect 90° turns. Not sure if that also helped.

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example-sorter-chute-tipping-motor.fsm (135.5 KiB)