Shiner

You would think so, but not everyone is up to speed on how to do this, or what to do when a comparison is done and a conflict is evident. I have seen people get the AB message that there is no current version of the program in the processor, and think that there is NO PROGRAM in the processor and download the wrong configuration. I have seen cheaper softwares for other brands give conflicts with online versions simply based on the fact that the variable data has changed, not that there have been program mods at all. The key is to have a knowledgeable, confident person go online, merge a program and verify that nothing has changed when comparing to the backup. All software I modify gets a name change with the current date on the end of the program name, and all backups go into an archive folder in the project folder. The last site I was at, tehy had a list with a bunch of revisions, a couple different program names, dates ect, basically no organization. The plant maint guy thought he was doing the SAFE thing when AB gave the no compatible version message and downloaded what he thought was the latest and greatest. Needless to say, the last program mod wasn't even in the system. They had hired someone to come in and modify the machine and software, and they took the modified program with them, left them only one copy on the PLC. Point of all this is, find a system that is redundant, and idiot proof. You may think you are being excessive about things, but a little organizational skills can save a great deal of headaches at 2am

As Okie says, VFD's can be the culprit, either by noisy conductors that are unshielded, or by an improperly grounded motor as well.. Preferably you would want to run them in conduit or shielded SO cord. The housing of the motor will radiate the noise caused by the switching frequency of the drive and I have seen this cause problems like what you are describing. The second possibility, what kind of prox's are you using? If they are a two wire prox wired directly to an input, the current used to operate the prox circuitry could be flirting with the threshold of opening the gate on the input. If two wire devices are used it is always good to have iinterposing relays in the circuit.

There are many ways to do this. Putting htem on a server or external backup drive is a good idea. There is nothign wrong with having a CD library for backup as well. The problem with having a CD copy is often that if you are making machine mods, are you sure that a new disc is being burnt every time and that the old is being tossed. I have been to a site where not doing this caused a download of a version that was not current and the machine no longer ran as expected. Flash drives, hard drives servers are all good because it is pretty simple to save to them multiple times. The more copies the less chance for error. Also, a lot of people spend alot of time backing up the program that is running a machine, but not the software that allows access to the PLC. If you ever lose a laptop, you should have a plan in place on how every piece of programming software can be restored and re-registered where neccesary. Do the research now while you are calm and collected, not a 2AM when the plant is down and all tech support resources are unavailable. We do monthly hard drive backups on ours.

Right, Time To Live is not the ping return speed measured in milliseconds. C:\>ping 192.168.1.103 Pinging 192.168.1.103 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.1.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.1.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.1.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.103: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms This shows that 4 packets were sent, each with a Time To Live of 255ms. since my device is on the desk it took no measurable amount of ms to travel, which is shown in the Min Max and AVG. it is a good idea to have all devices on a network send information in a similar manner. If you leave the TTL on one device high, later as teh network becomes crowded, the extended packet life can cause random problems on the network which will be harder form someone else to troubleshoot.

Sorry, I had never heard that one before. I thought your explanation was spot on, sometimes I just like to elaborate and try to work in a car analogy into a tech forum .

I feel that some are taking the timing of hours-run to too much accuracy. What about the time after you turn off the motor output and it is "spinning down" ? Is the motor "running" or not ? Does it matter ?

Isn't there a way to have the processor record on power loss data into a register. I know I heard someone talking about the time it takes between the processor detecting a power loss and the time it shuts down being long enough to store some information. Is this only on a larger power supply that has the capacitence for a bit of ride thru"

I was going to mention something along these lines. At the start of a process, I sample and record the processor time. At the end I sample it again, then do the math to get the difference and add it to the total run time. There is no incremental loss from scan time or issues about setting up periodic tasks. You may get a slight deviation between actual shutdown and when the scan reads the time, but it is not an accumulating figure.

Usually we try to take into account all of the issues you mentioned in our layouts. Keep as much of the high power high noise stuff to one side and the dc and comms to one area. I like to put the switch right near the graceport (we use them regularly) and keep the cables out of the wireways completely. If they have to cross any power we try to be as perpendicular as possible to prevent inductance. Drives can be a problem because they do tend to be very noisy. I haqve heard of people using an enclosed wireway that is itself shielded, or like you mention use shielded cable. I have also had a guru remove quite a bit of noise by calculating the harmonics of the drive based on the switching rate, and based on the clock speed of the ethernet system, adjust it so that it produced minimal interference. If you want to keep things neat and in the wireways and dont have alot of room, Panduit makes a good noise shield for their wireways, they are always happy to show it off at the trade shows with some sort of display.

I have not had to directly deal with the code in some time but this is what i remember. For each panel, the power that is used for motors, control transformers ect needs to have one main disconnect, rated at the current of the combined loads as specified in the code. When bringing in control wiring that has a source derived elsewhere, as long as that source is protected properly with fusing/breakers you are good. There should be an article on labeling a panel that has 'one or more voltage sources'. If you had to break every line that came in, it would be quite unrealistic. If a panel has only terminals, and the controlling equipment such as motor starters and relays is located elsewhere, it is considered a junction box and those rules do not apply. It is still a good idea to label where they come from, I do not see that in the field enough.

This would work for an app if the actuator has limit switches which will be used to enable fwd/reverse. I have also used a programmable relay to do the fwd/rev portion and then count the number of strokes for a test. Most drives and controllers have an accel/decel function which will "curve off" the ends of the linear motion. If you combine that with the S-curve adjustment, you can make a pretty fair sine wave as well. I didn't mention it because you said you need to change waveform on a regular basis and it would become a tedious thing to do this way. But example, if you have a motion that lasts 20 seconds. 10 seconds of that is above the zero line of your scale, so set the decel and accel for about 1/3 of that time, so the ramp up will now angle off the bottom and top of the wave. Now if you about double that accel/decel time and put that in as your s-curve time, it will smooth out the changes and make things look much more like a sine wave. You can play with this and see what kind of results you get till you get something a little more flexible in. BTW, eaton (CH) ELC has a pretty inexpensive controller that has pulse output.

We did a setup using a wave generator for testing apps, the generator is not a very cheap solution but you can set various frequencies and can change from sine to square wave. We did acceleration tests with the square wave, accelerometers measured backlash and we charted acceleration, current, and actual position vs command position. If you are working in a lab, not much can outperform that setup for simplicity sake. Assuming your stepper motor has a controller, the stroke can be set up in there, and then the generator does the rest via 0-10v or a variety of scaled analog signals. http://www.bitscope.com/software/dso/guide/1.3/?p=wavegen

I have a program I DL'd from a customers machine onto a flash drive, then Imported into my emulator to edit. I have made the changes requested, but on the Panelview Component Dashboard, it shows the program, the version, and Valid says No. The original program which is listed as well shows yes. Any Ideas?

Thanks Okie....that toggle interlock bit is the solution to the problem with my quick attempt at a simple one rung version. I had never had to do this with AB, did it with eaton and they have an ALT function which changes state every time a leading edge hits it. makes this pretty simple.

Is that the ELC and EZRelay that you are talking about, with HMI Soft? Or do they have a different product line. My company supports these products, they are definately a good cost effective solution for small stand alone systems.

It is great when they release new versions with bugs. Mine has a few glitches that are little annoyances, but the fun one is in the tag editor. If I click on a button or object to assign a tag in any way, connection, visibility, read ect...once the tag window is open, you see the project name with the little icon and two screens. If you have recently changed the project and want to update, usually you would hit the refresh all folders, I get a second instance of the icon. Each will expand to the full tree with offline online ect, but NONE have the new tags. Only way to update is to reboot whole machine. Sucks when you think, hey I need this button and a funcion to make it work and then you have to go through all that for something that should take five minutes.

I follow you now, you are going online with an actual screen? I have a project that was taken out of a screen via flash drive, and am running it on the emulator. It lets you edit and make changes save ect...just does not have the validate buttons.

Would this work for toggling based on a single input? Test.RSS

slcman, looks and sounds pretty simple to just click on those buttons.....now if only they were on my screen!!! Any chance I am using the wrong software? I see at the top of your screen shot it say panelview explorer. At the top of mine it says PVc DesignStation - ProjectName - Windows Internet Explorer.

Yes, I have seen an app where the timer was set to the max value. Input 1 turned on the timer. When input two was triggered, the accumulated value of the timer was captured using a mov instruction. The timer was reset by Input #1, so actually on the trailing edge of input 1 the timer would begin to count. The timer would just run till max if no parts tripped the sensor, but every time a part went by, leading edge and true would reset the timer, and trailing edge it would start and run till next trip or complete. It seemed fairly simple. If neccesary, with a little manipulation you could start the timer on leading edge using a one shot rising for the timer reset.

I have looked and I know I saw the thread before about replacing the AB screen saver logo with one of your choice. I cannot find it and do not remember it being very clear. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I want to insert an image and use it as the logo.

I have TC, have not used knowledgebase much, just got the contract couple weeks ago. One thing I have not seen from the article you listed was how big you should make the bitmap. Is it a trial by error thing or does anyone have dimensions?

I have an app that has a UPS attached, the customer is requesting that if the ups fails after its 30min runtime, that whenever power is restored the system should revert to its running state. Safety is not a concern for this, the restart function would be only occur if all concerns were met. What I am trying to figure is how to implement this in a standard latching start rung that gets inputs from a remote system via EIP and from an HMI to start and stop the system manually. I know you can write to a register that will save the last running status and retrieve that on startup, but have not seen the app put to use yet. Thanks in advance