Logix PLC Instead of Hunkar DAC-V Molding Machine

[Arun Opto 22 0]

I've got a pretty obscure one! I have a client interested in moving away from a Hunkar DAC-V molding machine (due to price and lack of support). He wants to re-create the functionality of the machine in an A-B Logix PLC. I have all the details on the signals to be processed, and those are not a problem. But short of someone sitting down and figuring out the "functionality" of the machine and recreating it in RSLogix 5000 (which I feel would be a big task)...I wanted to check to see if there were any toolkits, routines, code, etc. with RA/A-B that might exist out there. As I said, this querey is probably a one in a million shot but I thought I'd ask (I didn't see anything after a quick search on Rockwells website). Thanks to anyone out there who can help or has a suggestion.

[Peter Nachtwey 15]

There are several issues. Some of those older Hankar machines may be crude but you must have a little respect for how well they worked and it wasn't by accident. Those controllers were designed to do one thing and do it well. A PLC should have fast A to D and D to A converters, a fast and synchronous scan and as far as I know there aren't any PLCs that can do that but a lot depends on what your needs are. If you need precision my recommendation is that you get a fast hydraulic controller and connect it to a Control Logix or compact logix. A compact logix should be more than enough to do the temperature PIDs and let the hydraulic controller do the position/pressure control. This would do the trick. http://www.deltamotion.com/products/motion/rmc70/index.php It communicates using Ethernet/IP to the PLC and will do all the position/pressure control. It can support loops as fast as 500 microseconds and the analog is fast enough to match. In fact the analog input does an 8 time over sampling. Every shot the controller can store positions, velocities and pressures at 500 microsecond intervals for very detial graphing. Programming is done using structured text in a state machine. The big thing is that the position/pressure alogrithms is already done. This will not be the cheapest route but it will yield the best performance and the shortest start up times. Red Lion G310s G308s etc make nice operator interfaces and interface nicely over Ethernet. The advantage a Red Lion display has is that it has superior Ethernet capability so it is able to grab and plot the shot data. To do better you need a PC based display. Here is a link to some application notes. One is on injection molding. http://www.deltamotion.com/applications/index.php There is plenty of example code for many types of controllers and HMIs to help speed up development. http://www.deltamotion.com/dloads/download...tegory=Examples Peter Nachtwey President Delta Computer Systems

[KarlK 0]

Moulding machines are typically not that complicated- temperature and pressure control combined with open/close and safety logic. I doubt if you're going to find anything pre-written. Just take it step by step and figure out how you are going to trigger functions along linear displacement. Good luck!