MassFlowUnit not rendering and item not packed if there is only one MassFlowUnit

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Steven Chen asked Jun 21, '22 Jason Lightfoot commented Jun 21, '22

MassFlowUnit not rendering and item not packed if there is only one MassFlowUnit

Hello,

I do some practice on MassFlowConveyor. I am wondering how conveyor decide to render flow units and the length of flow units.

By default settings, if I set MassFlowEntryTransfer Unit per Item less than 24, the flow units won't render, I guess the length of flow units is too short to render, but how it calculated?

I also tried to set Unit per Item to 1, that results first item disapeared.

massflowconveyor_v22.1.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 22.1.1

massflowconveyor

massflowconveyor-v221.fsm (66.5 KiB)

· 3

Joerg Vogel commented · Jun 21, 2022 at 06:40 AM

Reference mass flow conveyor. There is a well drawn purpose for this conveyor type. Discrete behavior does not belong to it. Maybe a question like: which is an useful lower limit to consider using a mass conveyor rather than standard conveyor object?

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Steven Chen Joerg Vogel commented · Jun 21, 2022 at 11:11 AM

My first thought on how to use mass flow conveyor is something like this:

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/AKBAEF/krispy-kreme-donut-production-line-AKBAEF.jpg

Because standard conveyor can only transport items in one line on x direction. So I guess mass flow conveyor can be used to transport items lie in line on y direction.

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Jason Lightfoot ♦ Steven Chen commented · Jun 21, 2022 at 11:34 AM

Mass flow is used to reduce many items events into single events representing changes in density in terms of items per conveyed meter. It can be used to represent the situation you show, but can also abstract single lane conveyors with high numbers of items to density events.

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Answer 1 · 2022-06-21T14:30:49Z

Joerg Vogel answered Jun 21, '22 Jason Lightfoot commented Jun 21, '22

Now that your aim is clear. You can transport one item centered and several drawsurrogate objects on its side. Each drawsurrogate object can be slightly vary in location. If you want to get a correct statistic you can translate items entering on a conveyor above one another. You can set their size extremely thin to get a mass on a small distance. You can move them by an photoeye into leading batch item and later you can dissemble and resize them when they leave your conveyor.

You get a more uniform appearance with a mass conveyor. You can still create gaps by setting shape dimensions smaller than item object size.

flowunit-by-flowitem.jpg (57.2 KiB)

· 1

Jason Lightfoot ♦ commented · Jun 21, 2022 at 07:12 PM

You can create the items in lines by using 'width first' and having a difference in the conveyor speeds to pull the gap.

In the attached model you can see this effect and also that it only creates two events - even though you've a gap between the rows.

MAssFlowSpacing.fsm

1 ·

1655838737065.png (277.4 KiB)

massflowspacing.fsm (52.8 KiB)

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