evol

I am working on a project for an internship. I more or less inherited this project from the previous intern and well... I think that for what is desired he was reinventing the wheel. My employer wants to upgrade the controls on a reflow oven that will give the ability to store multiple recipes, programs or whatever you would like to call them. I was thinking of replacing the existing PID controller with a programable autotuning PID controller. The intern prior to me had them buy a micrologox plc, a panel view 550, various cables, and various expansions modules..... (i.e. spent alot of money in my eyes) any thoughts? I am new to PLC's and the like and I have been doing my homework on it but I wanted to get maybe someones opinion whos experienced in this before I go to my boss and say " I think the company wasted alot of money for nothing on this project and it is going in the wrong direction." I also do not feel comfortable w/ a project that is, from what I see going down the wrong path. Ideas?

Sure. I am looking for ramp/soak function. sorry. I need the ability to control temp rise and hold temp for a period as well as the ability to program several variations or recipes that can be called or chosen. And the ability to add/delete/modify needs to be password protected. The project that I inheritated has a Ab micrologix PLC a panalview 550 for HMI all with some cables and expansion modules as the co-op found he needed. I just feel like he may have been trying to reinvent the wheel. It is a simple process control and the track he seemed to be taken seems to make little sense and much more complicated.

Hi all, First I am picking up a project that was incomplete by the prior co-op. I have had no documentation on anything for the project from him. No parts list wire schematics to help out.... etc. Now the project. I need to build a contorl system for a reflow oven. it needs to control heater elements and cooling fans. also it needs to be able to have the abilty to add, delete and edit multiple " recipes" . I just seem to be getting the feeling like he was trying to reinvent the wheel. I have checked out a few different things and came across the omron autotuning PID controllers. specifically the E5ER and E5AR. any thoughts?

Yes but I am trying to connect a panel view and the micrologix controller to the PC at the same time so I can test to see if things will work. what cables do I need to be able to do that? I have the cables listed above that where left to me from the prevous co-op.

I have a project that I am working on from the previous co-op and am trying to make sense of things. was just left a box of stuff basically. I have a: micrologix plc panelview 550 aic controller 3 RTD's and the RTD module to connect them to the plc the cables 1761-cbl-pm02 and 1761-cbl-as03. the former cable connects the panelview to the aic controller i believe and the first cable connects the aic to a pc, i think. now my question is don't i need a mini Din to mini Din cable? I think it is 1761-cbl-hm02 cable per AB's user manual but they have only micrologix 1000 series plc and i am not sure if it would be the same. any ideas?

You should be able to configure the RTD w/ the configure I/O. when you configure your RTD you should have a choice of units I believe. go to controller folder click on IO configuration and a window will pop up select the RTD from the list then click on adv config that is in the bottom of the screen on the left a new window appears click on the tab chan. 0-2 you should see in the data format it is set to raw/proportional change it to engineering units x 10 then click on generic dat extra config set the #'s to -16248 that is what i did for my project that im working on and i can read the RTD in celcius or farenheidt