moosetracks

@Twigums   We are experiencing some control sync faults and can't seem to find anything that might be causing this.  It comes and goes so the thought that it could be something from RSlinx and a certain pc when programing is intriguing.  Did you find anything from AB on this?  How often were you getting the control sync faults with the PC online with the plc?  Was it only when online or did they need to be making changes?  Any insight you can share would be appreciated! 

We are using a 525 to run a saw blade.  I was wanting to read the amp draw to find out when the blade is actually cutting.  It sort of works, but the amp draw doesn’t seem to be the best way to do this.  There is either delay in the data or the amps are not dropping as soon as it is out of the cut.    I was curious if you knew of a better way to find this information?   Is there a drive parameter we could read that would give us a more accurate feel for when the motor is cutting?  Do you guys have any suggestions for how to accomplish this?

Kaiser.  Thank you... Message sent. Travis,  The VM seems to run fine its just the unity mode that is finicky.  Have you ever tried unity mode with Studio 5000?

I run VM workstation 12 and keep all my Rockwell software installed on a windows 7 virtual machine.  It predominantly works great.   I like to run the VM in unity mode and that way I can use apps on both my host machine, and the PLC software on the VM.  However there are a few quirks to this.  1.  Doing branches and using the drag and drop to add instructions doesn't work as well as doing it when not in unity.   2.  When Studio 5000 would normally hang and show a blue circle the unity mode causes the Studio 5000 window to hide and your staring at whatever is running in the background.  Once 5000 gets done it pops back up.  Its visually annoying, but really doesn't seem to cause any issues.       3.  Sometimes when minimizing or maximizing the 5000 window it will appear to be lost.  However up in the upper left hand corner you can see a tiny portion of the studio 5000 title bar and if you double click it everything goes back to normal.  (image attached of this scenario)   Do you guys have a similar setup, or do you run the VM full screen?  Is Hyper V any better than VM for doing this?  Its my understanding that Hyper V doesn't have a unity mode and you have to connect via remote desktop.            

Yes that is doable.  I just wished I could come up with something since I have so many of these to keep track of.    

Its a 5000.  The only issue that I have with that is we have a several copies of the same program running with their own program tags, and just map the IO.  So we kinda need to keep all the logic in the same program or use we have to deal with controller tags sending data into program tags.   I don't think I can put a periodic task inside of a program?

Back in the old SLC days the encoder cards had the option to show a rate (hz) and a count.  With the 1734 I can only have one or the other.  I have an encoder on a motor driving a belt conveyor.  I want to know the speed of the conveyor with a decent update rate, as well as an accurate measurement.   With a one second timer comparing the change in counts the calculations aren't very accurate.  The longer we wait between updates the better it gets.   I'm sure the variation is caused by update rates. What logic would you guys use to get an feet per min number without just averaging a big sample?    

drforsythe,  That was what my current plan was on the spreadsheet.  I am just worried about things getting jumbled.  If you had 6 of the same machine when you purchased parts for all 6 would you use different PO's or?      

Are you using AB factory servo cables all the way for both power and feedback?  We had a baldor servo motor that had 40' of cable between the drive and the motor.  It was using THHN wire from the drive to the enclosure next to the servo motor, and then a servo cable for the last 6 feet.   We upgraded to an AB ultra 3000 drive and AB servo motor and it would run fine for an hour then give us all kinds of crazy encoder errors.  An AB God told us we had to have the servo power cable the full run, and when we swapped it out the problems went away.    

If you have the program you can clear a hard faulted SLC's by pulling the battery and then shorting the big capacitor on it.  That will sometimes bring a brick SLC back to life. 

I do machine design as in house engineer for a manufacturing company.  Typically our new projects are fairly vague at the start and the budgets are done in the same manner.   We are staring a massive project (for the size of our group) and this time they want a budget that is accurate.  We have done a ton of work to get what I feel is an accurate budget.  Basically we have designed everything in cad and have a parts list with a cost for each item.  We added a 10% contingency and I feel like we have the costs estimated as accurately as we can for the information we have.   Now I want to some how connect the parts list with what we actually purchase and keep a running sheet showing any overruns and items we didn't put on our list.  The budget was done in excel with a sheet for each piece of equipment.  I know when I describe it this way it sounds easy to just check off what we buy and for what it was for and line up the two columns, but its not quite that easy.  There are 50 some pieces of equipment with some of them being identical to each other.  So when we order parts for all the repeats we would have to go through each sheet and mark off that item.  I can see our spreadsheet becoming a massive jumble that could fall apart.  Other issues are things like fasteners and tooling where they are not marked as individual items, but we allocated $400 for fasteners on a piece of equipment.   I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but my core question is how do you guys do projects like there were you need to stay on budget, and be able to explain any over or under runs?  I did a google search for various things looking for software that can help me, but I must be searching for the wrong stuff.  Is there an industry term for the type of software I'm looking for?  Also we are a small company so spending $10k on software that requires a staff to use wont work either.      Any advice / insights appreciated...   Thanks!    

Thanks for all the info. I have been scouring the web for someone that does the Cartesian based systems that include stacking software, but so far I haven’t found anything. I hate to think I have to reinvent the wheel and write this stuff myself, but that looks like that is where I am headed for right now.

I’m developing hardware and software to stack widgets on a pallet. I have some ideas on how to accomplish this using the traditional PLC (AB) programming I have been doing, but it will need to be augmented with some additional PC programming to keep the PLC program easier to manage. I am going to pick the widget up with a vacuum system on a 3 axis gantry system and then pass it over a Gocator (measurement laser) to determine its size and orientation and then adjust the drop off point to place it where it needs to be. Then the program will need to remember where all the pieces are dropped off so it can continue to operate until the stack is complete. When I started to think about the programming I was curious what combinations of software (languages and types) are typically used in these types of applications? Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!