autotuft rewiring options

I have been asked to rewire a wilcom Autotuft machine at the plant. This machine is a standup cnc machine that sews patterns into backing. The machine stand 15' high by 15' foor wide. It has 4 baldor servos. x y z plus another axis for the heads rotation. The machine has undersided wire raceways which hard to swap out. The Size and movement of the machine causes alot of wires being shorted out or broken.


The machines sew head has like 30 i/o total. without the servo wiring.


I was think about using two micrologix's 1100. I would put one in the control panel and one on the sew head. The plan is to hook the two ml 1100 to a switch and communicate the i/o back and forth through one ethernet cable. this would eliminate alot of headaches. The only cables i would have to worry about is one power cable for the plc ,one ehternet cable. and the motor leads and resolver cables.

Does anyone have a bad experience with doing a project like this?

The only concern that i can think of is the limitations of the micrologix ethernet port. Will a micro handle 30 i/o continously without comm errors?
What would be the best type of cat 5 cable to use so it won't break?
Is there a way to run a wireless network between them efficiently?

Thanks ahead of time.
kevin

The MicroLogix 1100 com port is not the Ethernet/IP CIP type com port you find on the CLX line. You will not be able to "own" IO modules over the ethernet, or browse them directly.
Instead, you will have to set up message blocks, & read/write data values. This will put a good chunk of jitter into the IO update times, & with it being a CnC app, I'm guessing you want your IO updated fairly to very regularly.
A more appropriate fit for this application would be the Compact Logix line, with the L32E & AB or Wago or Turck Ethernet Remote IO. With this setup, you can fix the RPIs & have a damned near guarunteed update rate with VERY little jitter.
I would run the blue 5e ethernet cable, as wireless doesn't have the bandwith or in my experience the reliablity to run Ethernet IO off of it.
As an aside, banner makes some wireless IO that runs off of a battery. I'll look up a link & post it in the morning.

CroCop

The cnc in question is a wilcom machine that uses a 286 pc as a motion controller. I am pretty sure this was built in the late 80 to early 90's The plant that i work out does not have the clx line available to us. The cost of the micrologix would be cheaper then buying the million flex wire as in the past. There is only 2 sensor that will have to update fast as the rest of them are prox;s ob cylinders and home postion sensors. I understand that i would have to do a read write msg command. I planned on running a small network between the plc's and not allowing the plants network access.

I have seen the remote banner setup in person but i think there is a limit per node that you can run.

Once again, I wouldn't use the Micrologix 1100 & expect high performance. If you can take IO update varying 100 mSec (I've seen messages delayed in that range) feel free. If not, look elsewhere.

The 1200 and 1500 use DNET which is also just 2 wire communication. This may allow the use of just 1 processor with DNET I/O be used at the head or whereever necessary.

I didn't realize that the update time is that slow. Their is no way that will work. I have a 1200r on the shelf that i can use. Rs doran . What part would you recommend for the machine head. I have never used dnet but willing to try any solution that will eliminate the wiring problem i am having.

thanks for any help

There is no DNet card for the 1200 range.
Regards Alan Case

The internet ate my message.

It appears the 1200's can only do peer to peer, you would have to use an ML1500 with a 1769-SDN (same as used with Compactlogix) to have the plc be a master for DNET: http://www.ab.com/programmablecontrol/plc/micrologix1000/1769-SDN.html

www.odva.org has the info pertaining to DNET and the CIP Supplier Directory offers a list of devices and manufacturers.

Alan, the DNI will work with the 1200 http://www.ab.com/programmablecontrol/plc/micrologix1000/dni.html

Rs Doran,

Is their any special software that has to be purchased for dnet. Honestly i am not sure what to look for with dnet. I have several oem machines at the plant that use wago can bus modules.(very popular for european machines.) but i have never had to mess with any programming on them becuase the software is all passworded out.

The dnet would be a excellent way to go. The sew head only has like 10 1/o but the rest of the machine has limits and overtemps and yarn breaks which if i use dnet i can put the modules whereever i want.

thanks.

You will need RSNetworks and obtain EDS files. It is not that hard once you start doing it, just seems complicated in the beginning. Take a look here too: http://www.ab.com/networks/devicenet.html

How will you do the CNC programming? Do you have more than 1 pattern?

I just got some Igus cat5 cable that was made to flex. No problems so far and you can get short lengths.

You could look into something like this
http://www.moxa.com/Event/Tech/2007/ioMirror/index.htm

The cnc program part is done with the 286 pc computer. The computer has a controller card interface. I plan on hooking the plc to the exist card as it is 24volt i/o. The plc will be used to transfer i/o from the existing interface to another plc mounted on the sew head itself. This will eliminate the mess of broken wires. The machine is sewing a wool product so their is not alot of speed involved. I would like to be able to use the ml 1100 plc's(i already have 2 on the shelve) but their has been alot of comments about the scan times.
Can i use a patch cord(null modem) between the two plc and not use a switch and be any faster. I know that allen bradley has a firmware avail for the 1100 to fix problems with the hsc and the ethernet.

kevin

2004sk4 said:

The cnc program part is done with the 286 pc computer. The computer has a controller card interface. I plan on hooking the plc to the exist card as it is 24volt i/o. The plc will be used to transfer i/o from the existing interface to another plc mounted on the sew head itself. This will eliminate the mess of broken wires. The machine is sewing a wool product so their is not alot of speed involved. I would like to be able to use the ml 1100 plc's(i already have 2 on the shelve) but their has been alot of comments about the scan times.
Can i use a patch cord(null modem) between the two plc and not use a switch and be any faster. I know that allen bradley has a firmware avail for the 1100 to fix problems with the hsc and the ethernet.

kevin

Click to expand...

No, Ethernet will be the fastest. It is not the limitation of the switch, or bandwith that is the bottle neck. It is the nature of messaging, & how it is done outside of the PLC's scan time, & asych. from PLC to PLC.

With CLX, they have Ethernet that is producer/consumer model that uses UDP that is blindingly fast & very reliable.

The ML1100 is not capable of producer/consumer Ethernet, & is not suitiable for this application IMO.

I was trying to multitask last night and I am not good at it so my answers were short.

First, not knowing how this machine works exactly it is hard to say what could work. Using a 286 means this thing could be over 20 years old AND if the head travels you can expect some broken wires BUT that does not mean it could not be refurbished and left as is.

I have no idea but since this thing is sewing carpet I assume the head travels. You may be able to use or add a newer style wire tray system for the head that may not damage the wires as much, in other words there may be many things you could do to make it last another 20 as is.

There is armored flexible multicable but if you have a good tray system I would not worry about armored, just strong and flexible. Run several extra wires to cover yourself.

That said, now that you mentioned you have 2 ML110's I am not sure it would not work with peer to peer but as mentioned may not be the best for the job. You could leave everything existing and just connect the 2-ML1100's temporarily and see how well it works.

The best option (maybe) for you, since you can not use CLX is use the ML1500 with the 1769-SDN and remote I/O. DNET is producer/consumer too. This may not be cheap though. It will require RSNetworx etc., and you will have a learning curve.

THAT SAID, IMHO, the best option would be put a good tray system on it, go with stregthened multicabled wire, and leave as is. I do not see using plc's for this, if going to upgrade then either buy or build a new CNC system that incoporates remote I/O over ENET or whatever.

In a similar application we chose to run the I/O cable from far enough overhead that the stress on the cable was minimal. This replaced the troublesome trays that came with the machine. Given the size of the bed, I'm not sure that that would work in your case. Ours only traveled a little over 10' X 10'. Our cable was fed from a central point about 12' directly overhead, and was allowed to move freely with the saw.



Your case may not allow the overhead cable, but this was a real money saver for us. I was very pleased as we didn't have a single cable related breakdown in over three years. After three years, we replaced the cable as part of a preventive maintenance measure. It looked gangly, but it sure beat the trays.