My first project of 1994

[Goody 5]

Just before christmas I was called back to a machine that I put a plc in, back in 1994. It was my first ever full big project back then. They had bought a clapped out almost scrap machine and wanted me to do all the automation programming on it. (a retro-fit if you like) The company had two (so called) electricians that would do all the wiring _ I just had to do the panel and programming. I remember being frightened and excited at the same time with this project. (do you remember your first biggy?) Apart from the ?electricians being almost complete idiots and liking to wire anything in any colour and size avaliable it went very well. It worked almost correctly on the first trial. This machine makes mattresses - or at least the inside of a mattress without all the padding - the big square sprung part. The idea was at the time was to combine 3 machines that were manually operated into one automatic machine, and this it did. before it was automated it took 2 1/2 men to make 120 mattresses per day. After automation, the machine made 200 mattresses per day with an operative only occationally coming to it or changing the wire spool that fed the machine. Since 1994 it has made over half a million mattresses and I had never been back to it or seen it again since then until December 2008. The laugh was - the first thing they asked me was 'is it still under warranty'. and they were deadly serious because an output had blown. And by the way, the output had blown because about a year ago, an interposing relay that I originally fitted had blown - so they wired the relay output directly to the plc output. (cutting out the interposing relay completely) But the point of the tale is, I was very proud of this job at the time. The panel was a work of art. I wish I had taken pictures. But 14 years of dumb dumb electricians wading through the panel has taken its toll. When I opened the lid, I was horrified - so horrified that I whipped my camera phone out and filmed it - for you to see at the bottom of this post. They wouldnt hear of me upgrading the plc and there were no spare outputs (remember it was my 1st big plc job - I underestimated the size of the plc) but luckily, I had used 6 outputs for various fault lamps and the operative told me that none had worked for years - he had to guess the problem lol - all they needed were new bulbs. I used one of these outputs (least significant) and a new interposing relay to remedy the situation The plc used was a misi FXon 60 mr (i realised too late that I should have used a size bigger) but just look what they did to my baby. It was beautiful in 1994 now look :)

[larry818 0]

Pretty cool... Electricians are my worst enemy... My first plc project was about 15 years earlier. I used a Texas Instruments 5TI (actually, several of them) and found undocumented "features". Check this vid out, it was recommended my Youtube when I was watching yours... (Chinese press automation) :)

[Goody 5]

Whoooa............. I suppose chinese operatives are highly replaceable. :) "can we get 4 more operatives for the press, we have got 4 flat ones"

[BobLfoot 302]

Tell them you have a pair of mattresses this machine made in 1995 and ask if the springs are still under warranty. Or better yet ask about the warranty on their 1994 JAG. You're right it's laughable. If only to offset the tears you cry when you see the panel now.

[larry818 0]

I visited a site in Taiwan once that had an overhead handler that placed caul plates for a circuit board press. This thing would place one caul every 10 seconds, coming from about 8' away. Between cycles a girl would step between the handler and conveyor and place an unpressed board. This overhead thingy would easily chop her in half... This same factory had a conveyor process line I designed using a Meau A1S with melsecnetII remote I/O, about two dozen nodes. I thought that by distributing the wiring, I would be limiting the service dude's butchery to within about 10' of the node, rather than along the whole 120' long line. It turns out to have been a lifesaver on later visits... I love to see my older stuff still in use. A lot of it is, mostly the meau based stuff still has the original plc hardware. I made two spray coaters for Hughe Air Crash once, also based on that same 5TI plc. I got a call from the company I worked for then, 15 years later, asking about the PLC program. It turns out that the customer was just then getting around to installing them, for the first time.