gravitar

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Everything posted by gravitar

  1. I guess losing the power pins is a pretty good tradeoff for getting built-in DH485! The more I hear about the 1100, the more I like it. The next job I get that's small enough to use one, I'm going to try my hardest to get it spec'd in!
  2. You and everyone else are fully entitled to your opinion, of course. But I think you're taking an incredibly naive and simplistic view of the problem. I have no moral issue with locking away the "truely evil" of our society, but what makes you think our courts are doing a reasonable job of separating the good from the bad? How many in prison right now do you think really deserve to be there? ALL of them? 99.9% of them? What's your guess. Just do a google search for "wrongly imprisoned" or "wrongly convicted". Do you think these stories are just a bunch of liberal drivel? Here's a good article to comment on: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...convicted_x.htm Are they exaggerating or making it up? Do you suppose the prison overcrowding you mention might be due in part to all the people occupying cells that shouldn't be there? If anything should make you mad as heck and fell unsafe, that should. We still call it the "land of the free, home of the brave", but I start to wonder if our attitudes are starting to let this fine land slip into a totalitarian police state. Just give 'em more money, more power, more control. all in the name of feeling safe. We'll get there if we try hard enough.
  3. Usefull stuff?

    as opposed to a crossover cable? why?
  4. so the 1100 has a different pinout from the 1000, 1200, and 1500? Don't tell me they did that and kept the same connector. I'd like to think those guys have learned something about connector ambiguity by now!
  5. How do you define it? What sets apart a language from a mere list of configuration parameters? What made me think of this is the CNC programming classes I'm taking. I'm in the "advanced mill" class now, and the current topic is the Haas MACRO command language. Which by the way, according to the user manual, is an optional feature. So not all mills ship with this capability. What it allows you to do is silly, frivolous stuff like branching, conditional execution, variables, constants, indirect addressing, and evaluation of mathematical expressions. It has the look and feel of a BASIC written for a very compact/primitive environment. So in other words, WITHOUT this stuff, what have you got? I guess I was happy with simple position statements and the built-in "canned cycles", but now I'm starting to feel like that was something less than programming. And let me reiterate, this is the ADVANCED class. Most CNC programmers (is it still correct to call them programmers?) don't use or learn this stuff. They just make a list of tool movements and let 'er rip.
  6. I guess this is more targeted at my fellow Detroiters.. Have any of you taken the GM CCRW controls certification classes? Just wondering what your opinion was of them. For me, the GM certification would be nice to have, but my MAIN object is to get some training on the ControlLogix platform. It looks like this program might be covered under "No Worker Left Behind", so I was going to look into it. If the concensus is that it isn't a very rewarding learning experience though, I might look elsewhere!
  7. Supplies for the Common Controls Engineer?

    Almost forgot.. This is what I use to get into enclosures. It is just a $1 craftsman keychain screwdriver with one side ground back so that it'll reach into the recessed slot of a disconnect handle. Lucky for me, 99% of the time I work with NEMA enclosures so I don't need that funky square-drive key for the euro-style boxes!
  8. RSLogix 5000 emulate

    You're working with A-B.. Ain't nothing free :) But seriously, It is an interesting tool, but I wonder how useful it really is as a troubleshooting aid. It's been my experience that most things that require troubleshooting are where the PLC rack interfaces with the process. It's the physics, not the logic, that gets you. And the emulator operates in a physics-vacuum! The emulator would probably be good for testing your assumptions after the first iteration of writing a new program. After that though, in my opinion you need to have the hardware before you can make any meaningful progress.
  9. B Size Laser Printer

    Thanks, it definitely helps ME! I have a 4M+ that I haven't used much in the last couple years because it jams right at the very end, before the page is to drop into the hopper. The pages usually get crumpled accordion-style. My workaround has been to print one page at a time and pull the back door open right before the paper gets jammed. Obviously, that isn't a very robust solution. It would probably work a little better if I could find and bypass the limit switch for the back door so that I could just leave it open, but I haven't researched it that far yet. I wouldn't worry about the toner cartridge situation, the aftermarket will ensure that these are still available for many years to come.
  10. 400kw motor winding resistance

    I don't think you can test the motor's windings with a regular DMM, for the reason you just mentioned. You need a meter that is accurate in milliohms or even microohms. Special equipment is made for this. (Note that I don't have any first-hand experience using this kind of stuff, though)
  11. Devicenet Messaging

    http://www.ab.com/programmablecontrol/plc/...ix1000/eni.html It is essentially a small DF1 to Ethernet/IP gateway.
  12. Tube Cutting

    I guess it all depends on how deep the bend is and how close to the tapped ends the bend is. The best thing to do is to drill and tap one by hand, and then bend it in an arbor press. check it with a thread gage and see if is still within spec.
  13. WiFi woes in a hotel

    Thanks for the tip.. I just copied this hosts file to my computer. It must be working, because I notice now that the MrPLc google banner ads don't work anymore!
  14. Suitable PLC for in car mounting?

    A-B's offering in the extreme-low-end of PLCs, the Pico controller, will run on 12VDC as well. I'm sure Omron has a Pico-sized controller with similar specs (everyone does these days), so that might be the way to go if you want to stick with Omron.
  15. Suitable PLC for in car mounting?

    I'm probably flame-bait for suggesting an A-B PLC in the Omron forum, but the Micrologix 1100 will operate at 12-24 VDC: http://www.ab.com/en/epub/catalogs/12762/2...75323/tab2.html
  16. BooTP Helper Device

    How about "IP Freely" or "IP Everywhere"
  17. If it were me I think I would want to first check to see if it accepts ANY PC-cards. If you can't round one up, I'd be happy to mail you an old modem or ethernet card. I've got a stack of them :)
  18. Just as a sanity-check, have you tried any other PCMCIA cards (non-AB) in the socket?
  19. AB MICROVIEW

    Even easier than that.. It is a free download here: http://www.spectrumcontrols.com/dps_download.htm
  20. PLC Memory

    So did it actually keep running with corrupted data? that's a scary thought!
  21. Tube Cutting

    Here's a pretty good description: http://www.efunda.com/processes/machining/...rew_machine.cfm Cutting the tube to length would be a trivial operation for a screw machine. You could tap one one of it pretty easily, too. Tapping both ends is a little more difficult, but still doable. Typically this would be a second operation. The only problem with using automatics is they are becoming a dying art. You can buy a machine to run the job pretty cheap, but you'll have trouble finding a tradesman to set up and maintain the equipment. You company would probably be better off contracting a screw house to at least cut the tubes. You can do the tapping in-house if you want.. There's lots of companies that make (or made) drilling/tapping heads to do this.
  22. PLC Memory

    It would be rare indeed for a SLC program to "slowly" fail, and the source of the problem not to end up being the user program, something external to the PLC rack, or plain old operator confusion. It's all or nothing with a PLC, sometimes to our chagrin!
  23. Tube Cutting

    How will the raw stock be delivered to you? Sounds like a good job for an automatic screw machine. But you'd (probably) have to mess with coolant. If this is a big issue you might call some carbide tooling suppliers and see if you could cut it dry.
  24. A/B Rack Failed

    It does seem that the processor/adapter hasn't a clue of what is sitting next to it in a 1771 rack. SLC racks are considerably smarter (but perhaps for the same reason, they seem to fail more often too)
  25. Databases

    If one were to learn database skills for the first time, is SQL what they should focus on?