Mike Dyble

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About Mike Dyble

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  • Birthday 01/20/57

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  • Location East Riding of Yorkshire
  • Country United Kingdom

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  1. Ethernet Switch manufacturers

    We have used the Hirschmann Spider series, mainly 1FX4TX version. We use FO for interbuilding/longer runs and copper locally. Once you have invested the pennies(cents!) in the FO termination kit (We use LightCrimp+) running FO is easier than copper in many cases as you can run it on the same cable tray as the cable feeding that 50kW motor! The Hirschmann units have worked first time, straight out of the box. They also do a nice line of managed switches if you application is more demanding.
  2. Export Taglist

    If you open the tag list, select it all, copy, open excel or it's open office equivilent, paste, and you will have your tag data on the spreadsheet. Then you manipulate the columns to get rid of the stuff you dont need and format the stuff you do need to suit wonderware. You can even move columns around. Spreadsheets lend themselves to manipulating this sort of data. When you have the data in the right format save as a .csv ready for import into wonderware. Do a small section to start with, you will get the idea, and then when you are happy with the results do the whole tag list. It's actually quite easy! There may be other ways of doing this task......
  3. Minimum PLC input voltage!

    What voltage is present when the LED is removed, as it probably has a series resistor, fed from a higher voltage. If you dont mind digging around you may be able to find this resistor and pick up a voltage from the other end of it.
  4. Interesting the comments about the Ford Feista, we have a new one (well just one year old, had it from new). I get about 52mpg average, thats town driving, main roads, and a bit of motorway driving, however I do drive with a heavy right foot. Wife averages 55mpg, she has a lighter right foot! Remember the UK gallon is bigger than the US gallon, so divide the 55 by 1.2 that gives about 46mpg, very different from 65. Ford claim 72 mpg at 55mph, but that assumes a level straight road, no changes of speed, lights off, air con off. You are unlikely to encounter these conditions in the UK. Having said that the car is cheap to run, because it is 'low emissions' car tax is £35/year instead of £125 for the next category up. Perfomance is adequate, but certainly not sparkling. Having said that there is enough power there to collect a speeding ticket on a main road! (sorry Mr Plod, didnt realise how fast I was going, 86mph on a 70mph road) Engine is 70bhp I think. Having said that I get nearly the same fuel consumption from our Ford Focus TDCi, this has a much more powerful 115bhp turbodeisel engine, and is a much better drive on a long run. Translating these cars to the US market, well they both have manual gearboxes, 5 speed or 6 speed, I am not sure how they would cope with an auto box. They both passed the european emmisions and safety tests, not sure how these relate to the US ones
  5. S5 TO S7 Conversion

    The reason two addresses are specified, eg E400 and E401 is because the block address list on many CPU's is only 8 bits wide, so you need two 8 bit addresses to store one 16 bit address Although DW's are 16 bits many S5 CPUs have 8 bit memory, so the first question is which CPU are you using? If it's 8 bit then you need start address + (offset * 2) If it's 16 bit then just Start address + offset
  6. Problem Convert TIR and LIR instruction

    OPN DB[#DBNo] #DBNo is a 16bit variable which contains the DB number to be opened. In your example it would be DW45 from the DO DW45 in your statement
  7. Problem Convert TIR and LIR instruction

    This is a good example, the thing which would confuse people is the * 16 or SLD4 step, this is required because with indirect addressing it is possible to address down to bit level, but in this case we are working at word level. The manuals do explain, but Siemens manuals, in my opinion, are not the best out there. There are other ways of doing this, e.g. using AR1 and a pointer. However this method is close to the DO FW or DO DW command in step5.
  8. S5 TO S7 Conversion

    My GUESS is that the code is transfering one DB to another If you use LIR to access a dataword beyond DW255 in S5 steps to find address are 1. Find DB start address in block address list 2. Add offset for header 3. Add 257 for DW257 LIR Next problem you will hit is S7 Datablocks are 8 bits wide, S5 are 16 bits wide. My advice: Dont try and convert the code, find the functionality of the code and rewrite it using S7, results will be better and you can use S7 instructions to optimise the code.
  9. Problem Convert TIR and LIR instruction

    You do not have direct memory access on S7, so you will have to determine the function of the s5 code and completely rewrite the code. S7 indirect addressing is however more flexible. There are also funtions for finding things like Data block length and current Data Block number, so I would be very surprised if you cannot duplicate s5 functions.
  10. S5 TO S7 Conversion

    Just spotted a nasty little gotcha in the example code you give, FW... refers to 2 bytes, eg FW219 occupies FY219 and FY220. So there could be some problems with this code, does it work now? Mike
  11. S5 TO S7 Conversion

    DO FW219 C DB0 This is treated as one statement. In simple terms it opens the Data Block pointed at by FW219. In otherwords indirect addressing. FW219 will contain a value between 1 and 255. The DO FW and DO DW statement work with a number of instructions, for complete details you need to read the programming reference guide for the CPU you are using. I have to honest, the manuals do explain the instruction, however the explanation is always the one that people new to S5 have trouble with. OB31 can often be a scan time watchdog retrigger, so that the watchdog doesnt trip when moving lots of data again check the CPU manual Hope this helps
  12. Software copyright

    May be nothing, but I would be interested to hear your views. I have experence with Siemens, AB, and some of the smaller players. Best: Rockwell, PLC Direct, Red Lion (HMI's) Rest (Which covers everything from OK to s**t!). Siemens, Eurotherm (Not PLC's but instruments) Telemechanique, Mitsubishi. .. This isn't overall value for money, or hardware, it's purely my 'service' rating, how good are they when ring them with a problem, how far will they go to help (providing you can pay for the service)
  13. Software copyright

    I spoke to my boss yesterday about the 'extra layer' and we reckon it can be made to work. It can also be the start of a 'drip feed' of the upgrade. In terms of hardware, now 'Company A' are in the sin bin we can use our own prefered option of Rockwell/AB. This choice is based on the following: Good support in the UK. Providing you are prepared to pay they will always try and accomodate you. Also they support old hardware as long as they can. Dont know if this is the experience in the US but in the UK they seem to have the best 'attitude' of the major players. Maintenance people understand AB hardware, we have micrologix, slc, and are getting our first controllogix on another project. I am comfortable using AB! I know my around it and providing we stick to systems that allow online changes (essential with what we are planning) commissioning new bits will be as easy as any commissioning job ever is. I think when you trying to be clever with the way you do a replacement its important to stay in your personal comfort zone with respect to the hardware/software. OK so the end result may not be as elegant as a 'rip it out and start over solution' but it can be done. We have short planned (1-2 day) shutdowns a couple of times a year, and occasional shutdowns due to other things, if we can use all this time well then we can chip away at the problems, starting on the section which requires mods. Because of the nature of the beast all the work is going to have to be done in house, but the upside of that is that the techs involved get a good understanding of the new system as it develops. It's not a done deal yet but it I think people will go for it, Senior management know that Company A have lost out permanently due to their attitude, and Production get the functionality they need
  14. Software copyright

    I actually like the extra layer idea that Paulengr suggests I think that could be made to work, and would avoid all the problems, and give our management a face saving exit. And I think it could be made to work with a minimum plant interruption. Unfortunatley when all this was first discussed internally our management got hold of it and OK they didnt so much get the wrong idea as over react. I was at a couple of meetings where I distinctly got the feeling that we were being held to ransom by Company A, but once it got up the management chain the reaction was swift and complete, to the point where Company A will never be on the site again. Pragmatism isnt one of the qualities that one influential person posesses. They went ballistic. The nearest polite analogy I can give to the 'briefing' I was given is 'Never give in to blackmailers, they always come back for more' The actual terms used were much more colorfull and for example involved Company A's management taking part in activities that I wouldn't describe here and I always thought were physically impossible! The reaction was probably justified, but perhaps not the best one in the circumstances. I am not going to name names at this stage, I may do once the dust has settled. And to answer the cost questions, it is not only the cost of new hardware that kills the upgrade, it is the down time, there was a big shut down last year, the next big one isnt for 5 years, and this project needs sorting now. I reckon we would be looking at a minimum 2 week shutdown to changeover, and that assumes no gotchas, which are always a possibility on a job like this. OK the work should have been done in the last shutdown, that is why discussions started, and if Company A had been more customer focused that is what would have happened. But the opportunity was lost and it's now the engineers responsibility to sort the (other peoples) mess out
  15. Software copyright

    It's a possibility, ideally we will need a more long term solution, we have tried to buy a secondhand copy without success so far. The problem is the relationship with 'Company A' has broken down. Our managment have accused them of holding us to ransom, which is probably true, and 'Company A' have said that they cannot and will not support old equipment for ever which is not unreasonable. The problem is that it has escalated up the management on both sides and positions have been taken and trenches dug!