Reversing Conveyors Issue

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Leo L6 asked May 27, '23 Natalie White commented Jun 1, '23

Reversing Conveyors Issue

Hi,

I'm trying to create a scenario in which a conveyor is reversed during model run in order to send an item to a specific location. But, even after the conveyor has reversed the items do not flow to the intended area. Attached model: test12.fsm

Help much appreciated,

Thanks

Software Version:

FlexSim 22.0.16

process flow conveyors reverse direction

test12.fsm (46.4 KiB)

· 1

Natalie White commented · Jun 01, 2023 at 04:36 PM

Hi @Leo L6, 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.

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0 ·

Answer 1 · 2023-05-27T06:21:02Z

Jonah K answered May 27, '23 Jonah K edited May 27, '23

I found two potential fixes to your issue.

By default, a straight conveyor will send the item to the furthest downstream side transfer (in your case StraightConveyor2). It looks like changing the conveyor speed for StraightConveyor3 to -1 and sending the item to DP2 still isn't overriding this original destination route. A quick fix to this is to move StraightConveyor2 0.01 m in the -X direction (upstream). This will calculate the routing data with Conveyor3 as being the "best option" --if the conveyor has a -1 speed.

test12_Option1.fsm

A second option is to call the functions "switchDirection" and "rebuildRoutingData" with custom code.

function_s(Model.find("StraightConveyor3"), "switchDirection"
function_s(Model.find("ConveyorSystem"),  "rebuildRoutingData");

By executing these functions consecutively, you are basically resetting DP2 to be in a downstream conveyor, which will then allow you to "Send Item" without issue.

test12_Option2.fsm

I also changed the Wait for Event reference to be looking for the Sink On Entry, instead of the Decision point, and added a decide which will only send half the tokens through just to see if the items can be sent in both directions. Hope this helps.

test12-option1.fsm (48.6 KiB)

test12-option2.fsm (48.5 KiB)

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