motioncontroller

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Posts posted by motioncontroller


  1. Additional information: I've received the "rig computer" which is a Windows 95 machine, it has the program that was last run on the rig, has LM90 etc. 

    We're working at getting an external drive recognized or a printer so that we can print out this program...... 


  2. This is a preliminary post to see if anyone can point me towards information on upgrading from LM90 to Proficy ME. We have a system that I was involved with 15 years ago and a new company that owns this rig is looking to upgrade from LM90 to PME and change out all of the Field Control Cards and update to VersaMax...... Was going to keep the Genius Comm until I heard that's on it's way out by the end of 2017 as well. Now looking to upgrade to Profinet. Any information that you want to throw at me would be appreciated. Cheers

  3. PLC


    I know your post was a while ago but I have been in Northern Alberta and the middle of Wyoming cold starting 9030's at -45 degrees. I have also been working in Mexico with the same racks/configs when the air con broke in the building and the systems still worked fine ambient was 100 degrees on average plus electric components in the cabinets must have had temp in cabinets quite high. I have always had problems with moisture control vs temp control with GE Fanuc products. Cheers

  4. Okay so here is what I have, I knocked off the Highs and lows and averaged the rest. My config: Start Address: 1 # of Registers: 100 Modbus TCP/IP Read Continuous GE Fanuc CMM321 Avg. (ms) 22.37 Max. (ms) 67.95 Min. (ms) 14.43 Delta RMC100 Avg. (ms) 8.83 Max. (ms) 18.86 Min. (ms) 5.39 This was all averaged at approx. 10,000 cycles. I could leave this for an evening to test as well but I figured that it probably wouldn't change too much. Russ, My CPU is the 374 which did not support Modbus TCP/IP at the time of conception and we are currently on a design freeze. (corporations, Yuck). I believe that it does now? I did try to read through the CPU port but it was blocked. We are reading consistantly from the RMC from addresses 1-98 (end of Axis 2 in the command window) and so this is very close to our reality. We have a bunch of customers in over the next couple of days and I will have to test on Friday adding more traffic on the network.

  5. I am sure I am in the wrong area to post this but here it goes........ We are a producer of equipment to the oil field and we have a number of units around the world. We provide our service technicians with laptops and the applicable software (GE-Proficy Machine Edition). A complete file package that goes with each unit consists of 5 different file types. (.zip, .csv, .bd1, .st1, .i2e) When our service techs send back a file that is supposedly updated we struggle with comparing every line of code that was previously issued to the unit with that of what the tech will send back. Our service techs are not dispatched from our main office they typically are local to the area they service. Are there any software packages out there that are able to compare or track revisions of files?

  6. Guys, Actually I had also not given all the information. By leaving 2 of the ports open to the RMC100 from the CMM321 we are seeing the ports close once in a while even though the ports are separated now by a factor of 1. The other interesting thing to note is that the fastest communication between device we have been able to achieve is 120ms. This is measured as an average by counting the successful writes or reads/time. Fairly simple math but we always come out with this average. It seems that of the "16 channels" that are able to be opened by GE, any device is only able to accept 2 open ports at any one time. GE is the lowest common denominator between the devices so I have poured over the documentation and the only way I guess to get around this is to close the port after every COMM_REQ. This is not very desirable due to the slow communication times. Am I asking too much from Modbus TCP/IP? (I mean with response times) Is there a way to open 3 ports to any device? I do know who everyone represents, that's why I come here. It's a quick way to have technical people answer my questions. Thanks for all the help.

  7. Just wanted to post a finding. We have been using a 90-30 setup communicating to an RMC100 for a few years now, communicating over Modbus TCP/IP. With some new devices on the bus we decided to re-evaluate our communication procedures and have simplified and improved our communication times. One of the items that we focused on was the addition of a third channel to communicate with the RMC100. We used channels 1, 2, and 3 for the RMC100 and 4 and 5 for some Turck remote I/O. What we noticed when adding this third channel was the random closing of one or both of the first 2 channels. The solution which has yet to be understood by us is using all odd numbered channels. The only value that has been changed is the 8th word in the block move. Now we are using 1 3 5 7 9. 2 of the channels to the motion controller are constantly working and never close (1 reading, 1 writing) the third channel is always open waiting to send the next command across. 1 of the channels to the turck remote I/O is again always reading and the other is always open waiting for change of state to set an output. Has anyone else come across this? Andrew

  8. I am looking to animate a piece of machinery from the top view. Looking down on this machine there is a rotating portion that moves from 35 degrees to 385 degrees, hanging below this rotational component there is an arm that extends out (hidden when under rotator) and extends to 15 feet from the rotator. I would like this arm to rotate around a circle and get larger and smaller. My problem is that I cannot find an object that I can apply a rotate and size function too. Does anyone know if this is possible. I am trying to avoid 2 different views. (side and top) Cheers Andrew

  9. I am refering to the IP67 "drop boxes" with the M12 connections on the front of them, I am really just more concerned about environmental performance. I am looking for systems that work well covered in drilling fluid......

  10. Has anyone used this product line from GE at all? It is the IC676PB series or the IC677PB etc. I am wondering about performance, pros and cons anyone has noticed. Thanks.

  11. We just finished what we believe has happened and then we got this reply from GE. What we believe has happened in the couple of cases of duplicate tags is that the user has built and downloaded the touchscreen before variables were created and downloaded/imported to the plc. Case: I did some testing and found that the PLC arrays under 11 (Array Dimension 1) are in format [0,00] and 11 and over are displayed in format [00,00] Start with array dimensions 2,2 and then drag 0,0 onto panel it creates proxy [0,0] if you then change the array dimensions to 11,11 the proxy doesn't change - still displayed as [0,0] but the properties of the bool object don't match the proxy variable, the proxy variable will stay in the format it was originally created in and the bool object will reflect current PLC Variable format 0,0 or 00,00 I forgot the errors were coming up during VALIDATION so I tried doing it with 2 buttons on the panel referring to the same proxy HMI tag but there were no errors. I am sure the problem lies in changing the array and then export/importing - perhaps something to do with changes inside Excel before importing but there are too many combinations to explore, I would need to know exactly what the client did prior to the change.

  12. "TAGS.BIN contains duplicate tag IDM08.DS_FILL[00,00]" I have seen something like this before with importing improperly to a CPU374, but now this the error I get when I am trying to download to the touch screen. I have reviewed the variables in the Quickpanel target and they all seem a-okay but there are "interesting" tag differences on the 90-30's variable list. Has anyone seen anything like this?

  13. Hey there all, I am starting another project using devicenet. This is the first time that I have worked with devicenet, so..... We use a 90-30 set up to control our normal system and now our great salesmen have told the customer that we can control one of their other vendors systems.(IC693DNM200) It includes 238 bits dispersed over 4 different nodes. Just to make it easy on me, YAHOO... I have to design this system in Canada and it is meeting the customers system in Singapore. I am heading over there for testing and commissioning. As I type this I am cringing, what sort of surprises could I run into; in other words has anyone any tips/tricks to help a guy out so I don't end up over there with my pants down. (I do have 4 months before I get there thank God) Cheers Andrew

  14. Hello, Excerpt from the 1541 manual: ******** Sequencing Communications Requests If the Ethernet Interface receives Command Blocks from the PLC CPU faster than the Interface can process them, the Interface will log an exception event 08, Entry 2=0024H and will log the PLC Fault Table entry: “Backplane Communications with PLC Fault; Lost Request” Only one COMMREQ function per channel can be pending at one time. A COMMREQ function is pending from the time it is initiated in the ladder program until its CRS word has been updated to a non-zero value by the Ethernet Interface. ******** Just some information I have found out in testing this type of a system: I have also found that the modbus TCP/IP devices that I communicate with have the ability to have 3 channels open to them at a time. And for example if you open channel 1 then 2 then 3 and then 4 upon the opening of 4 channel 1 automatically closes and so on. Some people I have spoken to have suggested not to ever close any one channel and just read and write to your hearts content. (i don't like this way) One last interesting thing you may want to test is the time it takes for a COMM_REQ to return successful. I have done this test but cannot quite remember the lengths of time. If I recall correctly my scans run from 3.5-7.8ms and it took on average 10 scans for and open or close, 30 scans for a read or write. The other thing to remember as highlighted in the above statement is that you can have one COMM_REQ per channel pending at a time so you really could have 16 COMM_REQ s pending at once. The best way to sequence these that I have seen is to use the success bit for the modbus function being used. Hopefully this helps a little.

  15. As long as the touch screen supports the Modbus TCP/IP protocol. It is fairly simple to set up the communication on the GE end. If you review the manual for the CMM321 chapter 4 has everything you would need to set up a stable commuication layout for your program.

  16. I have had a similar problem with Cimplicity machine edition and now Proficy machine edition (minus the crashing of the software). I have noticed if you clean all build folders before you download your online changes you will never have this problem. I hope this solves the problem on your end. Cheers

  17. Hello all, I am interested in knowing if there is anyone that can confirm or prove this wrong: Lack of knowledge I guess with the people I have delt with may have been what has caused me to become lazy and just accept this issue; due to the fact I don't know any better. Config info: CPU374 CMM321 The rest is not worth talking about. I am communicating with a third party controller using Modbus TCP/IP, now my question has to do with exactly the best way to communicate over this protocol. At the moment I Open a channel and leave it open for the whole time the PLC runs, subsequently I have set up a scan counter to deal with specific communication requests that are to arrise every number of scans. So a typical scan senario would be : 1. power up 2. counter counts 10 scans 3. open channnel 4. once scan counter equals 30 scans read third party's status 5. 50 scans write command to third party .........etc Once my counter reaches 110 scans I reset it and start all over minus opening the channel. I have found that by partitioning the COMM_REQ's I have much less of a problem with communication but I would like to speed some of this up, there is a visual lag time from when the PLC receives a digital input to initiate a COMM_REQ and when the third party controller shuts it off and I know this can be due to my scan counter for sure but in order for my COMM_REQ's to get through I must space them out. Questions: 1. Am I limited to 1 channel open to 1 device; if not is there a limit? 2. Should I be opening-reading-closing and/or opening-writing-closing a channel? 3. If I can leave a channel open all the time what is the purpose of the close channel command? 4. Is there a maximum number of COMM_REQ's that can be sent in one scan? 5. Is there a much better way to handle this kind of task? Thank you for your time.

  18. I have this manual if you need it email me. I will check this post in a day or so to see if you need my email address...... I am brand new to this site and am not quite sure how all this works. You are quite brave using LM90 to learn for the first time with if you are not familiar with that DOS screen.... Anyways good luck hope to hear from you