Saving Development Costs with Digital Twins - Motor Sizing for a New Filling Machine - Maplesoft

User Case Study:
Saving Development Costs with Digital Twins - Motor Sizing for a New Filling Machine

Challenge
Stoppil Industrie manufactures filling machines to serve a range of markets, including food, chemicals, cosmetics, and more. During the development of their new EB7000 screwing machine, they were concerned that their selected motors would be smaller than required. Stoppil needed a way to validate their motor requirements that would be faster and less expensive than constructing an entire physical prototype.

Solution
The engineers at Stoppil contacted Maplesoft to create a digital twin of their new machine, in order to validate their machine dynamics using an accurate virtual model. The digital twin, created by Maplesoft engineers, used technical details and CAD information provided by Stoppil in order to model the specific loading requirements for the new motor at every point during the proposed duty cycle, and at the required throughput rate.

Result
The results of the digital twin testing showed that the initial motor selected was undersized by a factor of ten, which would have resulted in machine failures during operation. By using a digital twin from Maplesoft, Stoppil saved the major expense of building a physical prototype that would have failed, confidently determined the proper motor size, and reached their desired throughput rate of 40 units per minute with their EB7000 screwdriver machine.


For over 40 years, Stoppil Industrie (based in Chanteloup-en-Brie, France) has been creating machinery for managing liquids during manufacturing. Stoppil was initially founded as a small company that produced water flow meters, and now produces an entire range of filling, dosing, and screwing machines to manage the packaging of liquids. These machines have been developed into a wide range of styles that serve both large and small companies across the chemical, food, cosmetic, and detergent industries.

Recently, Stoppil was developing a new screwdriver mechanism for one of their automatic screwing machines, the EB7000.  The mechanism was driven by a brushless DC motor, which needed to handle a variety of loads during the screwing process, which would be screwing sprayers, pumps, and plugs onto containers. Due to the new mechanism design, there would be a large amount of mass displaced at one point in the machine’s duty cycle, which results in a large amount of load placed on the motor. This design requirement was new for Stoppil, so they needed to ensure a proper motor selection to avoid machine failures.


Stoppil manufactures a range of filling, dosing, screwing, and labeling machines for the food, chemical, cosmetic, and detergent industries.

Engineers at Stoppil would typically choose their motors based on their past experiences and recommendations from their suppliers. In this situation, Stoppil was concerned that the selected motor size was incorrect, but they didn’t have the internal processes to validate the motor performance before a prototype. To save on the costs and time required to build a prototype for motor testing, they contacted Maplesoft to commission a digital twin of their new design. A physics-based digital twin would allow them to accurately simulate the machine dynamics before physical testing, ensuring the selection of a proper motor.

The screwing mechanism of Stoppil’s EB7000 product, designed with the help of MapleSim.

Using MapleSim, the system-level modeling software from Maplesoft, a digital twin was created. Maplesoft engineers used CAD information from Stoppil, and imported the CAD files into MapleSim to create a physics-based, multibody model of the machine. In MapleSim, the machine’s dynamics were created using a variety of drag-and-drop components from multiple domains, helping model all of the relevant physics for the motor’s duty cycle. The completed digital twin was then simulated under a variety of conditions, and the required motor characteristics were delivered to Stoppil.

The results from MapleSim showed that their initial motor choice was undersized by a factor of ten, which would have resulted in machine failures during operation. Stoppil discussed the simulation results with their supplier, and both companies agreed to use the results provided by Maplesoft. Using the simulation results, Stoppil was able to ensure that the new motor would allow for their desired throughput rate of 40 units per minute.

While the initial, undersized motor would have never made it to production, Stoppil was able to save themselves the major expenses of building a physical prototype that would have failed during testing. 
“If we had not used a Digital Twin, our first prototype would have been a waste of time and money,” noted Stéphane Chiry, the Commercial Director of Stoppil. The new screwing machine is now in production with no motor issues.


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