Cutting Line for Chocolate Bars – Special Machines with VisiWin 7 from Soldati AG

The production of chocolate bars is a multi-stage process which starts with the processing of cocoa beans and ends with the packaging of the chocolate bars.

Soldati AG, based in the Swiss canton of Lucerne, develops and constructs special machines and automation solutions. For a well-known Swiss chocolate producer, the company developed a water jet cutting line with VisiWin as the HMI basis.

The line is designed for cutting large bars of chocolate to size, which are then packaged afterwards. Since no standard systems were available to purchase on the market, Soldati AG developed a special machine.

The customer pours its chocolate into large bars. After cooling, the bars are placed on the infeed belt of the water jet cutting line and cut to various sizes for sale. This involves the use of ten water jets divided into two groups which use purified water under pressure of up to 3500 bar. Thanks to the double stroke principle, two bars are cut at the same time. After cutting, the bars are ejected automatically, new bars loaded and conveyed onward via a discharge belt to be dried.

To facilitate cleaning, there are no physical buttons (apart from emergency stop). Operation is exclusively via touch-panel, which is where the HMI developed on the basis of VisiWin 7 comes in.

The Search for a Flexible Tool

Soldati AG was looking for a software development tool with which an innovative user interface tailored to the customer's project can be implemented easily, sustainably and on an affordable basis. Special importance was placed on the ability to meet a wide variety of requirements from customers in different industries using just a single tool. To this end, VisiWin Modern UI was used, involving both ready-made standard functions as well as custom-tailored elements. One example of this is operational elements which additionally display states by using specific colors for backgrounds and text in the user interface.

“We had several requirements with respect to our user interface, which could not be implemented so easily by every visualization tool. For us as a manufacturer of special machines, VisiWin 7 is therefore the perfect platform: It offers – where it makes sense – a very high degree of standardization, which makes it possible to develop the HMI very efficiently. In addition, the completely open architecture also makes it possible to achieve the seamless integration of in-house control elements and programs, which enables our special requirements to be implemented quickly and smoothly,” explains Simon Hug, Head of Automation and member of the management board at Soldati AG. “The highly competent, fast and customer-oriented support provided by INOSOFT personnel, from which we benefited during the initial tests at the outset, finalized our decision to place our faith in VisiWin.”

Soldati AG

Soldati AG, founded in 1982 and based in Emmen near Lucerne in Switzerland, is an innovative manufacturer of plant and machinery with many years of experience in the implementation of automation solutions – customers benefit from these custom-tailored solutions. Soldati AG specializes in the optimization of workflows and production processes and realizes customer projects with a view to facilitating successful and profitable production.

Experienced and competent employees support their customers step by step, from the initial idea through to commissioning.

Soldati AG - customer-specific, turn-key automation solutions for manufacturing and production.