Two trays sorter

Hi, everyone,

• I am trying to build a two-tray sorter (two independent trays on the same carrier)
• My initial thought was to use the MergeSort conveyor object only because it worked very well before. However, this time, the difference is carrier type on the sorter, single tray vs. two trays per carrier.
• In two tray sorter model, one carrier must have ability to take two flowitems, i.e., one flowitem each at two different induct points.
• I have a trouble to put/merge/combine the second flowitem onto/with the first flowitem which is already inducted and passing by the second induct point. Since I used the spacing rule to represent the carrier, when the second item is ready, it is inducted "after" the first one which is basically the next carrier.
• I tried to combine two flowitems logically, but couldn't find a way to detect the passing item at the right time.
• I found a picture of one example on this page -- http://www.gbisorters.com/ImageUploa...Split-Tray.gif (BTW if this link violates Flexsim posting policy or copyright, please let me know. I will remove it.)

I must miss something and make it too complicated. Could you please help me to find a better / cleaner way to model the two-tray sorter? Any advice/suggestions/example would be greatly appreciated. Thank you much for your help in advance.

Hello Sung,

I try to explain another approach, which won't use the conveyor as an material flow object at all. The conveyor is just an object to move the carriages for the double trays. The carriage could be an pallet, which holds two totes. If you change the sizes of the pallet and the totes, the pallet looks like the picture you have linked in your post. You can build such a carriage in a combiner.
If you send the pallet with its two totes to a endless conveyor system, the carriage move on the conveyors never leaving them.
To load and unload you can place photoeyes on the conveyors and write a logic which moves items to the totes or from them away. But beware of the functionality of the photoeye. The cover and uncover-triggers fires twice. If you test for the covermode, you can execute your logic only on a single state change, e.g. YellowToRed (OnCover).
In loading action you have to be sure, that you have an item to move to one tote. In opposite to this you must check your totes if you want to empty one tote.
Further you have to build a system which stores the statistics of your sorter.

Jörg

Jorg,
Thank you very much for your suggestion and the template model!! It is a great help for me to get an idea of building two tray sorter!
(Two thumbs up!!)