Recording logic as it runs

[kcox1980 2]

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forums here. For a short introduction my initial training and first on the job experiences were with AB systems but not only was my job scope pretty limited(all I did was load a pre-made program into a newly built machine) but I has been several years since I've done even that. For the last 4 years my programming skills were developed on Mitsubishi systems, which were quite different. Now I have a new job as a Process Technician and one of my responsibilities is to develop my AB skills up to where I was at with Mitsubishi systems so that this new company can stop the current practice of having to outsource any PLC changes and troubleshooting to an integrator. I've spent some time on the phone with one of said integrators and that got me caught up a lot but I also have some training classes scheduled later this year.

 

So now that's out of the way, on to my question: We are having an intermittent issue where one of our extrusion feeders stops filling up for an unknown reason. I'm wondering if Logix 5000 has a feature where I can record a rung or even just a few tags so that if an event happens we can go back to that time stamp and see what the logic was doing at that time. For this particular issue I suspect a hardware problem but some confirmation that the logic is doing what it is supposed to would be nice.

[Michael Lloyd 85]

I use the trend feature for that. It logs data and gives you a graphic display. You can set the scan rate. Obviously fast is more data to store. You have to save the data before you close it otherwise it will be deleted. You can use Excel to view the data