Not 
so long ago every bakery out there was dependent on the paper stored recipes and manual weighting. Bakeries and other food processing industries are being improved with automation solutions.
Bakery Application
Here, we are going to look at the bakery application with multiple OCS units installed. The central eXL10 unit is responsible for handling recipes (about 200), overview of the process and communication with the compact XLe units. The eXL10 screen size should be enough to give the user a SCADA like experience and precisely monitor every aspect of the process. Communication between the two is handled over peer-to-peer CsCAN network which gives the benefit of fast and easily accessible information.
The ethernet port on the main eXL10 OCS gives remote access not only for the user’s benefit, but also for the system integrator, who can support his application remotely and much faster. Such support includes debugging and re-programming over Cscape, but also (together with WebMI) remote access to all diagrams and data fields displayed on any of the OCS screens. As for the recipes, WebMI guarantees easy Import and Export over Ethernet without any interference with the process. Any recipe update is handled seamlessly.
O
nce the proper recipe has been loaded, all necessary information is transferred over the CsCAN network to the multiple XLE devices. They are responsible for the proper dosage of water, flour and other ingredients as well as for the water temperature. All this is achieved by using a remote SmartStix I/O and both XLE communication ports. One of them is connected with a weight controller over Modbus RTU, the other is exchanging parameters with the water system via custom RS232 protocol. Both communication ports are working independently, all together with the CsCAN messages being exchanged between the central eXL10 unit.
The zipped package consists of the following:
Cscape Demo- Hardware configuration (eXL10 + XLE + SmartStix Digital I/O)
- CsCAN data exchange code for both units
- eXL10 and XLe Overview screens
- Recipe handler for eXl10 (menu Program -> Recipes Editor)
- Sample protocol configuration for XLe (menu Program -> Protocol configuration)
(Cscape 9.10B or higher needed)
Advantages of this automation solution are obvious – no more paper recipes or manual weighting, all ingredients are dosed precisely and automatically. This approach gives the benefit of the high quality products every single time, while significantly lowering production time.