New England Business Service, Inc. (NEBS) is a Groton, MA based company with manufacturing locations across the United States, in Canada and Europe, and annual revenues of approximately $500 million. In business for nearly 50 years, NEBS is a provider of top quality business and computer forms, checks and promotional products to 2 million small businesses. Much of their equipment is automated, and is designed and built by their in-house Engineering and Machine Shop operation.

Chuck Harter, Electronics Technician and de facto control designer at NEBS, used CTC's automation controller in a stitcher/taper unit for NEBS' Maryville, MO plant and in a stitcher unit used for an Ontario, Canada plant. The stitcher staples the book of checks together, and the taper applies tape over the spine of the book to cover the staples and to further bind the book together. While the old stitchers required time-consuming set-up or manual gauging to position the staples correctly, the CTC-based machine has negligible set-up time, and the staples are positioned accurately in each book every time. "It's a great thing, I'm just waiting for mine," said Pat Adams, an Imprint Tech II at the Townsend plant, who tested the stitcher/taper unit before it went to Maryville. Accurate positioning is essential because later in the process, when the books are cut across the binding into separate sets of checks, the cutting blade is immediately ruined if it hits a staple. Replacing the blade requires four hours of downtime. And while the old set-up of a separate stitcher and taper required two operators, a single operator can run the new integrated stitcher/taper. The new machine has increased productivity by 25 to 30%, and most significantly, NEBS has eliminated the possibility of repetitive motion injuries caused by manually positioning the books in the stitcher.

After completing the stitcher/taper unit, Chuck Harter was assigned to redesigning an outdated machine that NEBS acquired at McBee Systems, a company NEBS bought two years ago. The machine, called the Belleville Shingler, had potential, but needed upgrading from its 1970's technology. The original machine cut, collated, and glued sequentially numbered checks in a sheet where each check was staggered with a 1/4" overlap from the previous check. Five of the new machine's many requirements were:

• Speed and efficiency: the project's objective was to use one machine and one operator to do the work that had previously been done by up to three machines and three operators.
• Use of off-the-shelf components to minimize design time.
• Automatic transfer and execution of customer specifications from the order entry system to the machine. Detailed information on check layout, overlap distance between the checks (1/4" or 5/16"), and collation was input with the customer's order. The finished product had to be automatically manufactured according to the customer's specifications, with minimal input from the operator who ran the machine.
• Accuracy: because the checks fed into the machine were sequentially numbered and specially printed with the customer's name, each check was unique and very difficult to replace. Therefore, defective placement of a single check within the sequence created downtime while the check was affixed manually. Coordinated motion control for several different types of I/O was a corollary to the need for accuracy.
• Rapid detection and resolution of errors and other events. The system needed sensors that would immediately shut the system down when there was a lost check, paper outage, or end of job. Other sensors were essential to protect the operator and key machine components, such as the servo.

Finding the hardware to satisfy the demands for the Belleville Shingler's new design could have been a daunting task. But when it came to the controller component in the shingler, Chuck said, "I know just what to use." Chuck selected Control Technology's rack style controller with I/O, Servo, and Ethernet modules, and a CTC touchscreen for the operator interface. Chuck continued, "I looked at a lot of different controllers and [the CTC controller] was the one that was both fast and easy to set up." It was also the only controller that NEBS looked at that met all of the requirements for the project.

The Solution
After the favorable reception that the CTC-based machine received, Chuck and Mike DiPietro, Mechanical Engineer at NEBS, started work on the Belleville Shingler. One way in which they were able to immediately increase efficiency over older shingling technology was to change from a single-feed system to one that could throughput up to five checks at a time. The shingling process starts when vacuum feet on the machine pick up a single sheet of checks from a stack. Four or five checks are printed on each sheet, which is fed under a set of wheels and some belts that smooth and align the sheet to prepare it for cutting. The sheet is cut into four or five checks, depending on its layout. The separate checks are then fed to the final mechanism, which staggers and glues the checks back into a single sheet. This mechanism consists of a sliding bar, called a pin bar, that has a row of pins pointing up. Perforated holes on the side of each check align over the pins, and then a row of feet, called stomper feet, pushes the check down onto the pins. Glue is applied on the top face of the check, the stomper feet come up, and then the pin bar moves to the side by 1/4" or 5/16", with the check still on the pins. In this way, the next check that is fed to the pin bar will overlap the first one. The stomper feet push the second check down on top of the first one, gluing the two checks together. When the sheet is finished, it moves to a conveyor, ready for an operator to put it into a box for the customer.

One of the trickiest problems to solve in this application was how to extend the capacity of the servo that operates the pin bar. The servo has a maximum travel path of 8", which only allows the pin bar to stagger up to 15 checks. However, some customers need more than 15 checks to a sheet. To solve this problem, Chuck had to find a way to discharge the 15-check sheet from the pin bar. The stomper feet "hold" the sheet while the pin bar drops down, disengaging the pins from the original holes in the checks. The pin bar moves to the side and then up again. The shingler is now ready to collate and glue up to 15 more checks on the same page, without extending the 8" servo path.

To accomplish this operation requires precise motion sequencing to ensure that not only are the checks positioned properly, but that each device does its job and then gets out of the way so that the next device can move freely. "We couldn't have done this with any other controller," said Chuck of the complex motion control.

To ensure that each check order is automatically manufactured according to customer specifications, Chuck devised a way to link order entry to the CTC controller, so that the machine can automatically run each job the way the customer wants it done. The order entry system generates a bar code with the order, which accompanies the job to the shingler. A bar code reader, which is serially attached to the CTC Ethernet port, sends a request over the network to the order entry system for information on how to run the job: collation from the top down/bottom up, need for pressure-sensitive duplicates, number of checks per sheet, and number of sheets per book. The information is downloaded to the controller, which automatically sets all parameters so the job runs according to the customer's specifications. If no bar code is available, an operator can enter these parameters manually at the CTC touchscreen.

To get this complex application to run perfectly, NEBS needed support. They got all they needed from CTC distributor, Action Automation and Controls, Inc. ( North Attleboro, MA), as well as from Control Technology's home office. "The support from Action and CTC is great," said Mike DiPietro. "That's real important. If you really need help, they come right over."

Chuck also attested to the quality of the support they've received. "They can straighten it out over the phone 99% of the time," says Chuck. But he also found on-site support helpful at times. A long-time user of ladder logic, Chuck found that Quickstep™ took some getting used to. One time when he had a problem with Quickstep, he summoned Mike Bailey, CTC's New England Regional Sales Engineer. "We had it running within a half hour of when Mike arrived," said Chuck. Mike Dipietro concurs. "We had [the machine] running in no time at all because of the support."

The Belleville Shingler reduces the cost of the shingling operation by more than 50% and more than doubles productivity (as measured in orders per hour). Also, where three operators were needed to run the three machines that were previously used to collate the checks, the Belleville Shingler requires only one operator. All told, NEBS expects to realize a $93,000 savings in the machine's first year of operation.

With CTC, NEBS has built better business forms and better profits. Control Technology is delighted to be part of NEBS' success.