need help on making lights flicker on and off

i have a allen bradly plc in my class room at the college im going to. i have board with 7 lights and 7 switches on it. i had a program that had a switch turning on 7 lights at differnt times. so they were flickering at differnt times. but the thing was that the lights were dim i tryed changing the time but i dont know what to do now. i have a switch going to a timer to a sequencer and then to the lights. any sugestions on what to do i can add the file and see if anyne of u can figure it out i use rslogix500

Connect some lights but don't fasten the terminals and shake the PLC with all outputs on. They WILL flicker.

No kiddin'. Show us what you've got already.

Regards,

That is all one sentence. Learn to write in proper sentences - punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling. It will help you when you do get that real job.

If the lights appear to be dim (I think that's what you're saying???), chances are that they are cycling on-off really fast.

Like Jean Pierre said - show us what you have and we can help diagnose it. We're good, but we can't read your mind.

He would write things better if he were attending a college. But he is attending a collage.

A collage (From the French: coller, to glue) is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole.

Click to expand...

So it's difficult to tell what they are teaching. It could be a bunch of different things put together.


To mr_robot. After rewording your question you could also zip and post your program so that we can look at it. Make sure it is properly documented or you will get another round of criticism.

You haven't compiled that program and run it yet. It's still edits -- and it will NOT compile. You can't have more than one output coil per branch.

And, as it's written (if it would compile...) the lights would come on after 4 seconds, then never turn off until I:0/2 turned off.

Now, instead of writing your program for you, I'd like to lead you to discover the solution yourself:

How do you intend for it to work? Make an outline or a flow chart. Show each step and how it is to transition from step to step. How does it start? How does it stop? etc., etc., etc.

well i did what i did at school i am at home trying to work on it so i had to do the same thing my teacher told me to do. this is what i was told to do by my teacher. he said that if i did this the lights should turn on and then off by what i set the timers to. is this correct or how do i get the second timer to switch it back to off.

If your teacher told you to put 2 OTE coils on the same branch, perhaps you should find a new teacher.

Getting the second timer to switch back to off is similar to getting the first timer to switch on...

OZEE,

what program did you use to open the file from the OP. My version of RSLogix500 wont open te file.

Kind regards,

Mine is 7.3 - opens it ok.

My RSLogix500 ver.8.10 worked.

8.10 here. I did have to tell it to "work with a copy" since the file became read-only when zipped, but beyond that it was standard.

That might be the problem: mine is V7.00 and it states "Unexpected file format" when I try to open the file. Thanks for the info.

Kind regards,

Make sure you are not flashing the lights at times less than the human eyeball blink response ie about 100 msec.
If mine I would start with no less than 300 msec for on duration and a 200 msec "all bulbs off" before next one lights to make it easy to see what is happening.

Dan Bentler

Mr Robot, one of the problems you are having in addition to having more than one output per branch is that you are also using nested branches and more than four nested branches are not allowed. However if you extend branches instead of nesting branches there is no limit on the number of branches. By using extended branches you can put all of your outputs on the rung, one output per branch.

See this post for an example of what to do and what not to do.
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showpost.php?p=296358&postcount=4

To extend a branch right click on the branch and choose "extend branch up" or "extend branch down" See this post for an example of how to do that.
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showpost.php?p=259551&postcount=10

Now you need to put some thought into how timer T4:1 is started, stopped, and reset. The way you have it now T4:1 will time for two seconds when the program starts and then it will set the DN bit and remain that way until the PLC is turned off or it is switched to program then back to run mode.
One thing that your instructor may not have told you is that timers have another bit available to help you. The TT bit, ie T4:0/TT is true while the timer is timing but has not yet timed out. When the timer times out and sets the DN bit then the TT bit is set to false.

Last of all, please practice using some semblance of punctuation and capitalization. It makes your posts easier to read and it doesn't take extra time. You are studying to enter the professional workforce so please begin to be a professional. We aren't going to nit pick minor spelling, typos, and minor grammatical mistakes (I make plenty of those myself) but we are professionals here and someday you are going to be our coworker. Believe it or not, good communications skills are necessary in this line of work.

ya sorry about the writing. my PC usually changes little writing errors. so I was used to having it fix it for me. but I tried opening the file at my school and it wouldn't open.