Production system using Ether6

The block diagram above shows a belt conveyor system application.

The product is placed on the conveyor and weighed (the scale would be internal to the conveyor) and the weight information is sent to the Ether6 single-board controller. The Ether6 SBC is programmed to take the weight information and combine it with the current date, lot number, etc. Then the Ether6 computer composes the label information including the barcode that goes on each product and sends the data to the automatic label printer that applies the label to the product.

Once the label is applied, the product reaches the barcode scanner. The scanner reads the information and feeds it to the Ether6 serial port for verification. In turn, the Ether6 sends the information to the main PC over the Ethernet port.

Two additional printers (serially interfaced to any of the Ether6's six serial ports) could be used to print one label for each completed box and one for each completed pallet.

The Ether6 single board computer system provides a very cost-effective platform when compared to a PC based data acquisition system, which may not tolerate extreme factory environments.