ControlsGirl

could you share this again?

You'll have to share what kind of motor and HMI you have and what you are using to communicate. I would be straight up honest with your employer though. Why did the other guy leave?

It sounds like this is a school project...

Phoenix Contact, Lumberg, Brad Harrison, Balluff, the list goes on and on. I'm sure lead times will depend on where you live and the distributors that you use.

I would not be interested at all in taking that job. Only two weeks for all sick, personal, AND vacation time!? I do like the 4 hours flex time but it is a salaried job so I would expect the hours to be very flexible for engineering.

Well, I feel like there are a few types of responses to this. I cannot say that I am "all knowing" about safety. I also have no experience with MCCs. However, I will say that safety circuits need to be discussed more and that we, as a community, REALLY need to start discussing safety circuits that are completely digitalized. I think your question is great and very relevant. From the experience that I do have, this is what I can say. One of the responses that you might get will mention a risk assessment. Maybe you can get lucky and a machine risk assessment that will tell you that a safety circuit with redundancy and pulse tests, etc is not required. If that is the case then I do not see why you wouldn't be able to just use the PLC. Another way of looking at it is to check if it possible to replace the PLC with a safety rated version of it. This might solve your problem. I just did a quick google search and Siemens mentions safely controlling motors through their MCC. I'm not sure if the PROFIsafe layer can run on a Modbus protocol but if it can, you might already have what you need. http://w3.siemens.com/mcms/industrial-controls/en/control-devices-monitoring/motor-management/pages/default.aspx

@LURBY, I have a few comments. First, I know that part of Rockwell product prices are set by the quantity of items you purchase per family. I worked at a place once that had contracted out the panel build and had the panel shop purchase all of the material. I wanted to change that and purchase products ourself once we got a huge 3 million dollar line. I had a 100k worth of Rockwell products in it. Because we didn't have a history, our distributor did what they could to discount couldn't do much. Part of what they did was transfer over the discount from one product family that we did have to another product family. (I think they chopped off about 12%). However, they brought in a Rockwell Sales Engineer who was able to work with the distributor which resulted in another 20% discount!! My favorite PLC developement software, by far, is Logix5000. I would stop buying the micros and look at the low end Compacts. The prices almost overlap and using tag based programming and updated software with MANY conveniences truly makes life so much easier and enables author's to write code or change code to be much more portable, etc. With all of that being said. if you want a cheaper PLC, I've used the Unitronix PLC/HMI and I really liked it. There were a couple of quirks in the software that I ran into but the tech support was readily available, very easy to get a hold of, and super helpful. I've worked extensively with ControlLogix/GuardLogix, CompactLogix, S7-300s, Modicon 984s and Quantums, and then the Unitronix. As for servos, I have not worked with Rockwell Servos but I've worked pretty extensively with Siemens, Unico, and Emerson. The Emerson servos that can be used with the Emerson PowerTools Pro software are my favorite(digitax ST/Unidrive). The software is extremely intuitive. Hope this helps a little!

Whatever is free/cheap isn't going to be friendly. For one project, I would use draftsight and cross my fingers that I have a VERY good reference. If its for a lot of projects. I would cough up the 5500 and buy Autocad Electrical. ePlan is around 12k.

What size do you usually use for something like a 1.5"x0.5" lamacoid tag?

The only way to edit code in one place and have it update in other instances is to create an AOI and use the same tags. I will say that it seems amateur to write the same piece of code twice just to view. You could bookmark that rung or create a watch table to monitor the values.

Hey Guru, I originally typed this out but my loop is working I just didn't understand that I prob wouldnt see the Index move because I think it only updates it at the end of each scan...and Index is always going to be 3 at the end of each scan. Am I right!?!? Judging from the lights on the HMI, I am I'm trying to jump back just to loop through a piece of code. I can not get it to work. First I couldn't get it to count. Now it counted but the value I was using to index is stuck at it's high point. I am moving a 1 into that index tag before my lbl instruction so the next time it scans through, it should write a one in there. Could you show me just a snippet of a loop you have that is working? Also, mind sharing the excel secret??? tisha.lane317@gmail.com mov(1->Index) LBL...code code code Add(1 to Index->Index) LEQ(Index, 3) JMP

Ever since I have started, it always is best for the customer to keep as much logic on the plc as possible. This goes for any perephrial device. Robots, screw guns, etc. It is much more convenient to only have to look in one place and only have to train maintenance to know how to use one piece of software.

Has anyone seen, used, or designed a FTView ME application where there is only one display used for multiple groups of manual motions? If so, care to share what the design techniques were? I've done this before by having the station button update the name of a UDT with parameter files. It worked very nicely for that application. However, I am taking an HMI application that has already been designed for a line and I'm trying to make it much less cumbersome to update. I'm interested in hearing the ways other people have come up with in hopes that it might lead me to a very good solution for this project.

Did you learn how to program in a scripting language like C before ladder. I am just now getting into writing AOIs and I instinctively want to use them like a call to a function in C. I only execute it when I need to. However, I just spoke with some older controls engineers at my work and they say they like having it always enabled with some kind of bit that passes that initiates some function within. I guess that is where ladder is different. You can stop the process of an AOI be disabling it, even in mid cycle. In normal scripting, it executes to complete before jumping back into the rest of the code. I just had an "Aha!" moment