PiCPro for giddings & Lewis motion controller

Hi,every body.I am in automtion field for last 20 years. I have made more than 2 dozen plc programs in DL205 series koyo plcs.Now I have to make a 2 axis motion contol system.In Automation direct, motion control system is only supporting stepper motor contol.But in my application I have to use servo motors.I have one machine with 2 axis control,with Giddings & Lewis motion controller.The programming soft ware is Picpro for windows.I have already bought the Picpro for windows limited edition software.I have also made a small ladder logic program with the help of help menu.Now my problem is that I am not able to download or upload the program in motion cotrol unit.Actually I want to upload the existing program first,from the running machine,so that I can get some guidelines,to make good program.I am afraid that during uploading,by mistake I should not loose the program of running machine.Help me please.

Your best bet is to call G&L tech support. I use the G&L PLCs, but I am nowhere as good as I would like to be with them. Their # is 920 921-7100. Good luck.

PiCPro

There is no problem with uploading the program on the machine. Have you got the Lib's from G&L and your machines company? THe one thing you have to remember with a Pic is if the little disk at the left hand corner is lit up you have to save. If not you will have to down load the next time to get on line even if you think you have made no program changes. Alot of times you click on a bit and that is all that is takes to change the code.(Time and Stamp). Remember save save save. Only have one master copy too...

Many servo drives will accept a pulse train input so do not completely rule out using a PLC for your application. It all depends on what you are tring to achieve. How much precision? What type of motion are you trying to achieve? Are you using interpolated positioning? etc. etc.

BTW the power section of the G&L product [Now a subsidiary of Danaher Corp] is made by a third party. They manufactre the control section and provide a very nice software package primarily for motion control. Not so easy to use if you are doing a lot of standard PLC type logic. I believe they may soon have an IEC 61131-3 compliant programming interface which would make programming a lot simpler.

Have you looked at B&R Automation for your application.
IMHO they have the best software package on the market that tightly integrates PLC Logic/Motion Control/HMI. Their hardware is also very well designed.

Giddings and Lewis is IEC 61131-3 compliant. It is really a PLC with and extensive library of motion functions that are placed right in the ladder. The person's problem may be that he has not taken care of the basics of setting up the servo axes. These are setup in a file then loaded in the ladder with a one shot. Then another function block is used to start the servo interrupt. Velocity, distance, and much more complex motion commands are executed as simply as turning on an output with a NO contact, XIC type of instruction. Their technical support is the best I've used so don't hesitate to call them as suggested.