Duffanator

MrPLC Member
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About Duffanator

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    Sparky
  • Birthday 04/25/81

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  • MSN Duffanator@hotmail.com
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Profile Information

  • Gender Male
  • Location Pennsburg, PA 18073
  • Country United States
  • Interests Electronics stuff.... Anything with buttons or screens!

Recent Profile Visitors

3544 profile views
  1. Scanners

    I have just run some tests with the new Cognex 500 series barcode readers: http://www.cognex.com/ProductsServices/IDProducts/default.aspx?id=8493&utm_campaign=E1893&utm_medium=web&utm_source=cognexweb We are only reading 1d barcodes but it does it very well. I feel your Accusort pain, we have many Accusort systems and they have been pretty bad with being able to supply their scanners so we've been looking into other options. These have been the best camera readers I've found for the money. Comparable to Accusort laser scanners in price with the added benefits of the camera system (labels don't need to be straight, print doesn't need to be perfect, etc....). I would recommend having a Cognex rep come in and give you a demonstration.
  2. Citect Vs. Iconics Genesis32

    Thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate it. Actually after talking with a bunch of reps and testing out a lot of the different software I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with Inductive Automation's Ignition platform. It's much easier to use than a lot of the other software and for half the price of getting our Citect licensing up to date I can purchase a fully redundant system with unlimited vision clients and unlimited tags. Citect would be my second choice just because I'm familiar with it and it's treated us well for a long time but their annual maintenance fees are pretty rediculous (which is why we stopped upgrading a long time ago). I was not impressed at all by the Iconics stuff, it was the most difficult to figure out and use for me. It seemed to me like they were more interested in getting in bed with Microsoft than making a nice easy to use HMI/SCADA application. Every major, minor and outdated feature that Microsoft has come out with in the last 15 years is crammed into their package and it makes it a nightmare to manage. The Ignition platform, on the other hand, is OS independant. Since it's all written in Java you can run it on any OS that has Java on it. There are a lot of things that are different that take some getting used to but once I started actually programming with it and setting it up I have to say that it's the easiest of all of the HMI/SCADA applications to create, edit and setup (my opinion of course...) The other thing I like about it is there is no proprietary history, trend or alarm databases. Everything is SQL based; Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL are all supported and it uses the database for all trending, alarming and history functions. If I wanted to I could create a report in our crystal reports system and access everything that was recorded with Ignition very easily (not that I'd have to do that as Ignition has a reporting module as well).
  3. MC-WorX 9.20

    Hey all, Has anyone heard anything or have any information about the new MC-WorX 9.20 SCADA package coming out from Mitsubishi? From what I understand it's a Mitsubishi branded version of Iconics Genesis32 HMI/SCADA package. Does anyone know if it's still basicly that package with Mitsubishi stuff added into it or if it's been gutted just for use with Mitsubishi?
  4. Citect Vs. Iconics Genesis32

    Hey all, We have an aging Citect system at our plant (redundant servers running Citect v.5.4) that we haven't payed a service contract on for years.... Now I'm looking into either upgrading or replacing this system. One option that I recently looked into is the Iconics Genesis32 system but I don't know much about it and from what I've seen on their site it looks very similar to the Citect environment but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with both that could shed some light on it. I'm mostly interested in these key points: 1) How does pricing compare with both service contracts and licencing? 2) How easy would it be to update to the newest version of Citect versus starting over with a different product? 3) We use floating network keys for our Citect system, does the Genesis32 system have something similar to that? 4) Are there any major features that Citect has that the Genesis32 system does not have, or vice-versa? I'm also open to other suggestions as well, if anyone has any knowledge they would care to share it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
  5. How to Join 2 networks.

    I agree with Bob, We had some machines with AB Control Logix processors that had Ethernet cards on subnet 1.1.1.X. We needed to add them onto our control network so I just added another Ethernet card and made it subnet 10.101.50.X. That's probably the easiest way to join to another network. The downside is that you won't get any HMI's or any other networked devices on the network that way, but most people don't mind that as long as they can communicate with the PLC.
  6. Electrical Wiring and Test

    This may be a stupid question.... but why don't you just move the 24VAC power wire from transformer #1 to transformer #2 and then get rid of everything on the left? If someone ever connected one of those transformers to a different phase then they are on now you would be screwed really really bad. It's weird that they are using a 0-10 volt DC output signal tied in with a AC neutral for a common... usually stuff like that has a power input and a seperate signal common. Anyway, I would follow Paul's advice and make sure everything is grounded correctly or you're going to have all kinds of weird floating voltages and if you need any kind of precision with your 0-10 volt output you won't get it with floating voltages!
  7. E-mailing Forum Topics

    Ahhh, I did not see that. Sweet, thanks!
  8. I was reading Bob's recent post about Arc-Flash and since we here at Hatfield have also just went through some training courses I thought it was a relevant topic for the rest of my coworkers as well. I also though, wow, it would be nice to have an e-mail button that would put the forum topic into my Outlook in e-mail for to send to everyone. Is this already an option? or is it something that can be added? Just a thought!
  9. Citect Included project communication issue

    Ok, I'll check that too. Thanks for the information. There are 8 or 9 additional I/O devices that are HACCP related. Those are local to the redundant servers. By the way, I didn't design the system, I'm just trying to fix it.
  10. Convoluted ladder logic

    Looks like a standard latching circuit to me, pretty simple. You could group all of the errors, like low pressure and the not ready bits, together but it's actually not too bad the way it's written now. At least everything is labeled so you can tell what it is!
  11. Citect Included project communication issue

    Yes, I think so. That seems to be how the boiler room project operates. If I shut down the project on the local computer in the boiler room then the boiler room page on the primary and backup servers loose communication as well, so I would imagine that this is how the air compressor room would behave as well.
  12. Citect Included project communication issue

    Thanks for the reply Gambit, The redundant servers have been up and running for about 8 years now so that's all been proven. I did try running the air compressor project on just the primary server and shut down the backup server and still the same thing. It's exactly the same project as on the local machine, just included in the primary and backup server projects. It seems like it runs by itself as the server, I/O board, and port is not defined in the primary and backup projects, but it is defined in the air compressor room project that is included into the primary and backup project. We have another project for a boiler room that runs exactly the same way and that one is fine. I can't find any difference but I don't know where to look! I don't know enough about Citect to understand how the included projects work.
  13. Hey all, I'm having a weird problem and I'm wondering if anyone has had this same issue or something like it. We are running a redundant Citect server (V. 5.42 r0) and I have a project from an air compressor room that is included in the main project. The air compressor room project also runs locally on a machine in the air compressor room. The local machine communicates to the controller (Opto 22 PAC-R1 via OPC Ethernet) fine and all the information shows up on the Citect screen. However, the included project in the primary and backup Citect servers does not... everything comes up #COM. It worked before and I checked all of the Board, Port and I/O settings and they are identical. I tried unlinking the project and creating the link again and also including the project again but the same thing happens. I don't understand why the local project, that is exactly the same as the included project, will get data out of the Opto 22 but the master included project will not... (I can ping the Opto controller from the Citect servers so it isn't a network connectivity issue). If anyone has any ideas or anything else to check please let me know, thanks!
  14. My first Q project

    You could try using the same port for both HMI's. I have 4 Mitsubishi touch screens using the same UDP port on one Q02U processor with no problems (you can't change the port parameters in the Mitsubishi HMI's) Two different IP addresses using the same port is acceptable. Maybe that would solve the problem?
  15. Voltage vs Current sensors

    We use a lot of 0-10 volt control (mostly for controlling inverter speeds and such) around our plant. We don't usually have any problems with it, as long as you follow some guidelines you probably won't have many problems at all. You need to keep the 0-5 volt wires as far away from higher voltage, higher current lines as possible. The more current a wire is carrying the more inductive influence it will have over your low voltage signal wires. If you do have to bring low voltage signal and higher voltage control wires close try and do it at right angles where ever possible. NEVER run them parallel to each other (for example, in conduit). Make sure your low voltage signal wires are shielded and ground the shield only at one end. If you ground it at both ends you'll turn it into a long antenna and it'll be even worse than if you didn't ground it at all. Those are the "big three" for running low voltage control, I'm sure other people will be able to chime in with some additional things that they have run into but if you follow those it should be pretty reliable.