Giz99

Another good reason to install all your PLC software on a seperate Virtual Machine. When you get a bad install, reload your backup or clone and start again. I have had issues like thing with GE, Allen Bradley and others.

The insulation on welding cable is not designed for continuous use. My electrical inspector will fail any installation which uses welding cable for a non welding application. His reasoning is that it is not identified in any of the tables in the electrical code.

You will find that the welding cable does not have any rating on it. If you look in your electrical code you will not find welding cable mentioned for continuous current carrying applications. The DLO able is a great multi strand cable but it can be expensive.

Did you see if there was a new .eds file for the drive and install it?

I have been using a program a lot from logmein.com The free version will allow you remote control of another computer. You can use this troubleshoot or anything else you want. It is really easy to setup.

Phoenix Contact makes a 24VDC UPS. http://www.phoenixcontact.ca/news/248_7867.htm

I just set up a Generic numbered company. It was easier and I only need it for Banking and Invoicing. When people need help they know who to call. Some day if things ever slow down, I will think about a catchy name. Giz

I have been using the Phoenix Contact Thermomark S1 for the past year. It is a small bench top printer which accepts different sizes of wire labeles, heat shrink, and other types of labels. I uses a software package to print from a PC and you can export from Excel or EPlan. Giz

I have used a couple of Red Lions and they are great. They are easy to set up an program. On one of them I am using them as an interface between two different types of PLCs manipulating data in their structured text language and sending it back to PLC variables. The nicest option is that you can upload the complete program from the unit. AB panel view plus only keeps a compiled version. Giz.

I have two laptops and I use the converters from Quatech. They are rock solid and I have not found anything that I cannot connect too serially. PCMCIA version http://www.quatech.com/catalog/rs232_pcmcia.php Express Card version (had to buy this when I found that my new laptop did not have a PCMCIA card) http://www.quatech.com/catalog/expresscard_performance.php I also have a devicenet PCMCIA card that I need to use occasionally. I bought a PCMCIA to express card converter by Duel Systems http://www.duel-systems.com/products/adapters.aspx what works well with my AB card. I wished manufactures of new equipment would put USB or ethernet ports on their equipment instead of serial ports. I still see this on recently released equipment on a regular basis. Giz

I like to use page and line numbers then increment each wire number on the same line. For PLC hard wire, use the I/O Address. For Remote I/O I have assigned internal bits as the I/O address at design time. For some of the I/O such a as devicenet you don not always know the address until you configure it on line then it is too late if it is incorrect. By assigning the generic internal address the configured I/O just gets re-mapped in the code. Giz.

A less expensive option may be to use one of the Red Lion HMIs or other controls. They can host a web page of the data you require and may work out less expensive then an AB card.

Omron works quite well with Devicenet and the Devicenet card seems reliable for GE. Watch out for cabling lengths and practices. Giz.

I purchased one called a DuelAdapter by a company called Duel Systems P/N DA-001 I needed to use a AB devicenet card on my laptop and this was the only thing I could find on the market. To my surprise it has worked extremely well especially since AB cards can be a nuisance at times. The cards is kind of bulky but it works. Goodluck. Giz

S7 likes to integrate the HMI software into the program. If you have a program with HMI's programmed in Protool or WINCC Flexible and these packages are not installed on your program you will get these messages. You can still go on-line with the PLC and do changes. Once you install the HMI software these messages go away. Giz

If you are using a SLC 5/05 this is really easy. There are examples on the DVT sight, just make sure you use N7 for all your data. If you need more info, email me. Giz

It may be less work and money just to upgrade your PLC to a 5/05. Giz

Your Scan time of your PLC would be longer then the time of your timer.

You may want to try a PCMCIA card for the se rial port. They supply power and use the same interrupts as the old serial ports. The one I have is from www.quatech.com. New laptops now have Express card slots to make your life even more miserable.

I finally have a 17" Notebook and a 22" extended desktop screen which is really nice. Unfortunately all laptops come Vista Ready so finding deivers to "downgrade" to XP can be quite the challenge. Giz.

My preference has always been page number and Grid number The left verticle side of the page would define all the grid line numbers with a horizontal grid at the top for letters. This is opposite to mechanical type drawings. The wire number would be defined as xxxyyz xxx - The current page number yy - The grid line number where the wire Starts z - A number that is incremented everytime the wire goes through a device. Device tags for components should follow the same conventions. As an example if this was page 030 your wire numbers and Device Tag would be as follows: 00 01 030021 CR02021 030022 02 --------------------------------| |----------------------------------- 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 Hope this helps. Giz

Check all the pins of all your cards and all your connectors. We have had two incidents where a pin got bent during installation causing intermittent operation. The latest one was on RIO. If you squeezed the modules together they worked fine otherwise they were intermittent. There was one bent pin causing the problem. You could have the same problems when the modules get hot enough and start to expand. Giz

If you are communicating with different SLCs check the MSG help file. The 504 will not allow an entire register (255 words) to be sent, I forget what the limit is. The 505 is unlimited. Ethernet I/P would be the preferred method if possible. Giz

If possible, I always ground the common (-) of my 24VDC general purpose power supply. I do this for safety circuits. If the cable gets damaged there is a better chance that the +24VDC and blow a fuse or trip the safety circuit. The other reason is for noise imunity. If you have large motors, VFDs or Servos a lot of electrical noise can be induced into long cables expecially related to light curtains. These transients can reduce your 24VDC preventing relays and some solid state devices from operating. In this case you may need to ground your negative in multiple locations. Giz

EPLAN is The best package I have worked on available on the Market. It is a lot more expensive but will do automatic wire numbering, tracking interuption points, terminal strip and panel layouts and BOMs. It also has a lot of Macros for devices and an excel interface. If you are doing a lot of drawings it is worth the investment in the product and the training but you need to work with it quite a bit to really take advantage of it. AutoCad Electrical will also do a lot of the above but you need a Cad license also and I find it slow and cumbersome. I find that you have to end up doing a lot or wire numbers manually after an automatic re-wire to correct them. Giz