The Turkey Slayer

Just started a new job and and currently installing all the software I can from our toolkit. I'm trying to install Panelbuilder 1400e right now. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit and the setup executable refuses to even run even if I change the compatibility settings on the properties tab. So I installed XP Mode and Virtual Machine from Microsoft. I run the Setup32.exe program from the 95NT folder as well as the one from the 95_v3 folder in the virtual machine and I get the same issue with both. The executable runs, I put in my licensing information, and I get an error message without any text. Here is a link to the screenshot: http://imgur.com/INB8zE7 I'm going to move on and continue installing software, but I'd like to know if I'm on the right track or if I need to do something different. Thanks

Hey guys, here's my situation. I'm rebuilding a panel at work and we're eliminating a couple of temperature controllers in favor of using the PID functionality of the Micrologix 1100 (the panel is in a food plant and is sprayed down daily so we lose these door-mounted controllers a lot). The tunnel is cooled using liquid CO2 and a series of valves. The valves open to cool the tunnel and close when the temperature is met. Since the temperature has to remain as constant as possible, I feel I should use a PID loop instead of a simple high-low limit scheme. My question is what would be the best way to use a PID loop to control a digital output? I'm really inexperienced with PIDs and so far I've only run into controlling an analog output with an analog input.

I'd get ahold of the UL508A spec and study it. There are a ton of things that affect your design and documentation. You'll need to calculate the SCCR of your panels and label them properly with that and all the other information required. It's definitely possible to have a labeled panel that is not UL compliant, if you get an incompetent inspector. We just got a panel in from England that was stickered. It gave itself a 300 kA SCCR rating even though not a single component was rated above 200. My favorite part though was the use of supplementary circuit breakers as branch circuit protection. They even changed wire sizes through these breakers. But the UL Listed sticker was there nonetheless. Whoever put it there has no business around a control panel and ought to lose their job.

JMP and LBL aren't used very often anymore. They're a holdover from the days when memory was expensive and processors weren't as powerful. They're included for legacy purposes, but the instances in which you'd actually NEED them are rare.

Yes, you can do this. I know the Allen-Bradley drive manuals have a schematic for this if that's the brand you're using, but I'm sure the principle is the same on others, too.

There are massive differences between a window unit at Lowe's and a control panel A/C from Hoffman. For one, the Window Unit is a residential grade unit. The manufacturer didn't have to spend the extra time and money building an A/C unit that complies with all of the various certification requirements for industrial-grade devices. It's more than just cutting and bending some steel a different way. It's more R&D and engineering time. Plus, Hoffman isn't selling nearly as many units as Lowe's is, so they don't have the economy-of-scale advantages residential unit makers have. It's a basic fact in manufacturing that the more you make of something, the cheaper each unit becomes. Those hard setup and tooling costs are spread over more units. Plus, there is more of an incentive to increase the efficiency of the process as time goes on.

Hoffman has a thermal calculator on its Thermal Management website. I've found most manufacturers list the heat output of their devices in Watts, not BTU/Hr. You'll usually find this in their spec sheets as "Watts Loss." But whether or not you'll need air conditioning is determined by these factors: 1. The surface area and volume of the enclosure. 2. How much of that surface area is exposed to the air (so for a wall-mounted panel, you'd need to subtract the area of the back face from the total surface area) 3. The insulation value of the panel. 4. The max. temperature outside the panel 5. The max. allowable temperature inside the panel Also, it matters where the panel is located, if it's in direct sunlight, and even what color it is. Obviously if it's outside a darker-colored panel is going to absorb more heat.

One thing to keep in mind. No heat exchanger, water-cooled or otherwise, is going to perform as well as an air conditioner. The reason is because an A/C system manipulates boiling points. It takes 1 btu to heat one pound of water 1 degree. So if you had a pound of water (about a pint), it would take 1 btu to heat it from 211 to 212 degrees. But to actually boil that water and turn it into steam would take 970 btu. When the refrigerant in the evaporator of an A/C boils, it is removing hundreds of times the heat from the panel a simple heat exchanger would.

Euchner makes a system that allows you to daisy-chain devices and still get cat 4.

Keep in mind if you're using a 1762-IF4 the total update time isn't necessarily what you select on an individual channel. It is the AVERAGE of ALL FOUR channel filter settings, even the ones you aren't using. So if you want a 450ms update time, you need to set all four channels to 450ms in order to achieve it.

The 1100 isn't much older than the 1400 and also has an on-board Ethernet port. Perhaps you're thinking of the 1000?

I think Adobe gives away it's PDF Printer driver along with the latest version of Reader. If not, they're easy enough to find. I would just print a project report in RSLogix but point it to the PDF Printer driver instead of a physical printer.

FactoryTalk View is up to version 7.0. You probably would have wasted a lot less time just buying the upgrade. I know it's expensive, but I'm guessing you don't work for free, either.

The Best, but most expensive option is to buy a Control Logix rack, power supply, a 1756-DHRIO and a 1756-ENBT. You can then browse the DH+ network in RSLinx over Ethernet, message between processors, and yes, communicate with FTView SE. You could also have a dedicated PC with a PKTX(D) card and RSLinx Gateway, but the problem with that is you're relying on Microsoft Windows running to keep the link up.

Studio 5000 is ONLY applicable to versions 21 and above. Versions 20 and below are RSLogix 5000. You basically have to install both if you want compatibility on either side of the dividing line. Keep in mind, Studio 5000 editor and RSLogix 5000 are essentially the same program, it's just that version 21 brings a new name with it. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't call it something like FactoryTalk Design Studio View Editor Station Logix 5000 SE ME XP 33 59 LE, but then again that would be expecting Rockwell to be consistent at something.

Never mind, I found the issue. My mask values weren't right. One of the masks I wanted was 0000 0000 1000 1111, so I typed that into the mask field and got that weird alphanumeric interpretation. When I changed the mask to 008Fh, it validated.

I"m converting a SLC 150 program to Micrologix 1400, and there are a number of SQO instructions in the program. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how sequencers work, but I'm running into a problem when I try to validate my logic. I'm using addresses I've set up in R6 to be the control files for each SQO instruction. Specifically I'm using R6:0-5 for my six sequences. All of them have a varying number of steps. The problem I'm having is when I go to validate I get the "ERROR: Operand sizes do not match" message on every rung where I Have an SQO. I'm not sure where I went wrong. I looked at a video online and it seemed pretty self explanatory. He used R6:0 as the control file for his one sequencer and had no problems running the logic, so I'm not sure why I'm getting an error message. I've attached the program file. Keep in mind it's a work in progress.

After 6 years of using AutoCAD electrical exclusively for schematic drawing, I can honestly say I prefer using Vanilla AutoCAD. The problem with Electrical (and by extension all parametric schematic builders) is that you are forced as an engineer/designer to do things Autodesk's way. The more you do something "manual" or out-of-the-ordinary in the print, the more likely it will screw up some parametric component later on. I've found myself correcting wire numbers and component labels just as often with Acade than with regular Acad. I'm sure Eplan is better (since it's not a shoddy collection of lisp routines scotch-taped on top of an existing product), but it's still a hard sell to a place that's already been using AutoCAD for years. When you try to sell them a parametric schematic builder, you are essentially asking them to spend loads of time implementing their drawing standards into it, as opposed to copying the prints from the last job and modifying them.

I have an application where I'm reading a pressure, evaluating it against a calibrated value, and logging it on a trigger (so times are not uniform between readings) with a trend object on a C-More panel. I realize there's no option for it, but the problem I'm running into is that the pressure from batch to batch could range anywhere from 20 to 60 or so psi on average, BUT between parts in the same batch the difference is only 10ths or even 100ths of a PSI. So what I'm going to run into is I'm going to have a trend object with straight lines (not very helpful, especially when there's such little difference between pass and fail in this application) and I'd really like to have the graph adjust to the current range. Even if there was a way to manually adjust the scale, it'd be a huge help. If there's no way it's not a deal-breaker though. The primary reason for it being there is to log data and I understand it will do that accurately regardless.

As long as you have FactoryTalk View ME (otherwise known as RSView ME) Runtime installed on the PC, then yes, you can run an .mer application using a PC as an HMI. Now, there are limitations to this. I'm not exactly sure what they are but I know that FactoryTalk View SE Station Runtime is what Rockwell recommends you use for that application. You develop the screens in View Studio like with ME.

The PID loop is a calculus equation, and the vast majority of people who tune loops don't have much of a working knowledge of calculus (me included). I remember when I first started getting into programming and I asked someone how a PID loop worked. His answer was "it stands for Proportional, Integral, Derivative," which of course was no help at all. Unfortunately, I've run into few people who truly understand how it works and pretty much just adopt a "throw numbers in it until it works" approach (again, me included). And people do that because, generally, it will eventually work. The P and I terms are relatively easy to understand. Proportional is how much to respond based on how far off target you are. Integral is how much to add to that response based on long you've been off target. Make P go up and the amount the CV changes in response to error goes up. Make I go up and CV ramps up faster over time. D is more complicated in that it tries to compensate for where you're going to be, and (I think) uses the derivative of your PV slope at given intervals to do this. Tuners generally don't like messing with the Derivative term because: A) It can make the loop behave in "unpredictable" ways, and B) In many cases, just tweaking the P and I terms can get the loop to a state that's "good enough" for the application Generally, I don't mess with the D term unless there's a critical component to the control that needs to strictly avoid under or over-shoot.

I've used GX Developer and Rockwell stuff and Rockwell is way easier. But that just might be because I'm a Rockwell person primarily. Keep in mind though Rockwell only now just added the capability to upload program comments to some of their processors, so you won't have that on Micrologix or SLC and only a few CLX processors.

Just started a new job a month ago and I'm loving it. But one thing I'm wondering is what kind (if any) of naming conventions are you using for your tags, whether it be the tags in the logix platform or the SLC-500 series tags? I've kind of started with something basic. For example, all discrete input tags start with ID, discrete outputs start with OD, Analog inputs and outputs are IA and OA respectively, and tags used for operator interface start with IDOI, IAOI, ODOI, and OAOI. That way I can keep it straight what the intent for each tag is in the program. That's just something I've come up with off the top of my head, though, and I'm always looking for better ideas. So what does everyone here do, if anything?

Thanks for the replies! I use User-Defined Data Types when the application calls for it, but sometimes they're so simple where there isn't a group of identical or similar equipment or cells and it wouldn't make much sense. My first job in fact was a customer who replaced an old Texas Instruments PLC from the 80's with a Compact Logix L33ER, which I admit was massive, massive overkill for the application. It was just level management for three tanks. A Micro830 would have done the job (which I wouldn't recommend, the only way I'm using the Micro800 series is if I don't have a choice), but because they bought another piece of equipment with an L32E, they decided all of the processors in their facility were going to switch to the L3x series.

Going on your own is possible. There are places, depending on where in the country you are, that ONLY build panels and program PLCs. But there are a number of challenges you'll face if you decide to start out doing it. For one, there's the legal issue. Remember, you'd be selling a potentially hazardous product that could possibly start a fire or even cause a machine to kill someone if not built correctly. Depending on where you live, you could be in for a huge mess of legal hoops to jump through before you'll even be allowed to sell your first panel. Then there's insurance. There's also the fact that you'll pay more for components than your bigger, more established competition. You know why so many OEMs use Hoffman panels even though they're super expensive if you were to buy one? Because they buy so many they get a massive discount on them you don't get. They can literally turn around and sell them to you for the same amount the supplier would charge and make a profit, so you can imagine how easily they could undercut your prices when bidding on a job. Finally, there's a question you want to ask yourself: Do I want to build panels, or do I want to be a businessman? If you really love building panels and loathe the idea of spending all your time thinking about accounts, union contracts, price negotiations, job bidding, etc. then you'll probably be disappointed if you go that route.