Hello Everyone, My name is Paul, I am a product development engineer with a plastics manufacturing company just outside of Chicago. I am looking into designing an ovality gauge for a round container that we produce. The gauge would rotate the container via a servomotor and would measure the ovality of the part by a CMOS laser gauge. Ideally, the data logging system will track the rotational position of the container as it spins, and will log that data in sequence with the measurment data, for later exportation and data cleaning. That way, a distribution of min/max ovality can be correlated to the circumference of the container. My concept is only in a preliminary stage as I have a large amount of research that I still must complete to fully understand the scope of what I may be building. At the moment, I only have a small amount of formal PLC program training from a single class in college a few years back. Outside of that, I am completely naive to both the fundamental elements that my gauge will require, as well as to what interface programming will be done once a build has been completed. If anyone cares to act as training wheels to my learning process, I would much appreciate any simple guidance on first, the required hardware for this project. My list thus far: (could be far off with some of these) Gauge Fixture Hardware Servo motor Servo Motor controller?? Servo motor PLC interface?? Data Acquisition system A concern of mine right now will be in the starting and stopping of the cup rotation and the starting of data logging. For the sake of simplicity, and reducing operator interaction as much as possible, I would like the entire process to be triggered by the single touch of a button or footswitch. This button would initiate the rotation of the servo motor and with the start of a constant rotational velocity, would trigger that start of the measurement and rotation position logging. After X amount of rotational counts in the servo motor, the system would stop, and the data would be exported. I would truly appreciate the insight from anyone willing to lend some help. Here are the conceptual drawings:
