fsuJustin

Omron F-160 Vision System with Allen Bradley CompactLogix

8 posts in this topic

Hello,

Myself and my teammates are working on our senior capstone project for our Electrical/Electronics Engineering Technology degree at Ferris State University in Michigan.  Since all three of us are planning to go into Controls Engineering careers we decided to use some of the recently donated Omron F-160 vision systems to place on a two belt conveyor system to check good part/bad part by taking an image and sending it to an Allen Bradley plc.  The only issue being that we have zero experience with omron products.  That being said the plc we are using is a CompactLogix chassis (since that is what we have used throughout our college classes thus far) and through research we believe that we can communicate using ASCII commands (rs-232 protocol) using the Allen Bradley 1769 ASCII communications card in conjunction with our existing cards from our classes.  We also have the Omron NS10-TV00B-V2 HMI with an Omron NS-CA002 video card that we will use with the vision system and in connection with the plc as well.  So ultimately our question is for some of you who are familiar with the F-160 system and its capabilities.  Will this even work?  What was used for programming the HMI as we have seen various different programs though research?  Is the software still available?  To obtain the software would it be something that would need to be acquired through Omron? 

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Why are you thinking of sending the picture to the PLC?  What do you expect a PLC to do with the picture?  The vision system will process the picture and provide an answer based on your setting criteria.  I assume you mean the vision system will send pass/fail data to the PLC.

F160 is quite old, and I haven't ever worked with one. I think I can locate the manuals if they are not already here.

As for the HMI, it programs with CX-Designer.  Software is still sold as part of the CX-One suite or Sysmac Studio suite.  Yes you need to buy it from Omron.  But I am also not sure if that HMI can talk to a Rockwell PLC.

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Crossbow has pointed you in the right direction.

The NS with CA002 can be used to program and display images from the F160.

Been several years since working with the F160, but I don't thing you will be able to send images to the Rockwell plc, and as Crossbow said, what will the plc do with the image.

The F160 was a pretty capable unit for its time.  Could support two cameras, partial scan, pretty complete inspection tools.  This uses menu driven programming.  Hopefully you have a programming pendant.  If not, the NS can be set up to act as a pendant through the CA002.

You can use ASCII commands (RS232) to the F160.  There was a separate manual for communications that explains the commands and responses you should receive.

Hope this helps.

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Thank you a bunch to both of you! That was exactly what I was looking for.   I appologize I wasn't clear in my wording but yea I just want the vision system to send a pass fail signal to the plc in order to track bad parts vs good parts in a tracking subroutine within the rest of the plc program.   We have acquired all of the manuals and have looked into and read most of them pretty extensively I just more was curious as to what people with experience with the vision system had for thoughts on the project and to make sure we weren't overlooking something huge as none of us in our group have worked with Omron ever and we have very limited knowledge of vision systems in general thus far.   Again thank you very much for your replys!

Justin

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Justin,

Not sure what you will be inspecting, but a couple of tips on the F160.

If parts are not oriented the F160 has position compensation.  This must be set up before you program the inspections.

A part is typically a Scene, each scene can have multiple regions of interest.  I would need to review the documentation for how many.

The system can only process one Scene at a time, but you can switch Scenes with digital I/O or RS232.

The F160 was a fast vision system in its day.  We had a customer use two cameras, with 7 inspection regions total at 1100 parts per minute.  The measurement data was logged in the plc for the last 1000 parts.

This is only a gray scale product.  Lighting is really important with vision, it will make or break your project.

I wish you and your teammates luck with your project.

gtsuport

 

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Thanks everyone for your responses!

One other question my project group and I keep asking ourselves as we set up our configuration is, "What is the actual function of each component in lamens terms?" Note, I have attached a wiring diagram of the donated Omron F160 system.

From the responses, we know that the NS10-TV00B-V2 Interactive Display is used in conjunction with the F160-C10E-2 Vision Controller to set up the scenes used to inspect the parts. But why is the vision system connected in the way in the attached wiring diagram?

In other words, why is the vision controller connected to the PLC controller? And then the HMI connected to the communications card of the PLC? Why not just have the one RS-232 connection to the PLC? It maybe our lack of experience, but if anyone could elaborate the specific function of each vision component and/or how it functions as a whole.

Again, our goal is to use this vision system to inspect a part. When determined a good or a bad part, we need to use that determination in RSLogix 5000 in ladder logic to operate the rest of the machine. Also a side note, we purchased a 1769-ASCII communications card to use with our Allen Bradley CompactLogix PLC, since the donated configuration had a serial communications card as well.

*I can provide additional documentation if needed.

Wring Diagram (Omron).pdf

Edited by fsuJustin

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Just now, fsuJustin said:

From the responses, we know that the NS10-TV00B-V2 Interactive Display is used in conjunction with the F160-C10E-2 Vision Controller to set up the scenes used to inspect the parts. But why is the vision system connected in the way in the attached wiring diagram?

In other words, why is the vision controller connected to the PLC controller? And then the HMI connected to the communications card of the PLC? Why not just have the one RS-232 connection to the PLC? It maybe our lack of experience, but if anyone could elaborate the specific function of each vision component and/or how it functions as a whole.

Hi Justin,

 

1. NS10 Displaying F160 input image

You'll need to program the NS10, adding a Video Display object on a screen to be able to see the F-160 image. The image is transferred from F160 to the NS10 through the NS-CA002. This connection doesn't do anything aside from displaying the camera image. You cannot get any functional data from the camera such as inspection results.

 

2. NS10 Controlling or Monitoring the PLC

Aside from displaying the F160 image, you can use the NS10 as a control panel for the PLC. You can make buttons, lamps, number inputs, etc onto the NS10 screens to control the value of PLC memory. To send the commands, NS10 need to connect to the PLC using it's PortA or PortB. In your case it is connected to PLC's SCU21 slot Port1 through the PortA.


3. PLC Control to NS10

The Serial RS232 connection between F160 and the PLC CPU's Serial Port can be used to trigger the vision system and receiving inspection result. Triggering is done by PLC, sending commands to the F160, to which afterwards the F160 will return a response including inspection result, though the F160 must be setup first in order to do so.

 

Hope that helps
 

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Justin,

I just received your voicemail.  Do you have a complete system from Yazaki?  That was the system described in my Feb 4 post.

The HMI is connected to the vision system through the NS-CA002 add on board.  This supports the video signal and the programming pendant connections.

The vision system is connected to the plc for data collection.  The plc stored the last 1000 measurement results.

Been several years since I have worked on these systems.  PM me your email address and that should speed things up.

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