Data capture

Good day all. I have an ongoing project that several of you kind folks at this forum have helped get launched. It is a program that controls various aspects of an acid strip line. My last part of the project was to display timer values on a marquee, outside of the acid strip room. That is all working beautifully (thank you for the help). After it has been running a while I have a couple of new issues that have come up with the operator's. First of all, there are nine tanks of various acid mixture's that the parts can be soaked in. Some parts use all the tanks, others may only use one or two, then a rinse tank. I have had supervisor's come and ask if I could check and see if a certain basket was dipped in a particular tank and for how long. I'm sorry but I don't even know where to begin! I would like to be able to store data showing a date/time stamp (that would be the identifier of a particular basket as they run them through one at a time. If I can create this, they would be able to run more than one at a time. What I would like to do is have like a table that is viewable from the HMI (Quick Panel Jr.). I then need to find a way to get that information to some sort of data base. I'm sorry if this isn't enough info. Thank you.

There are examples on the A-B website that show how to count up or down and show hours, minutes and seconds. It's then just a matter of showing the values on your HMI. You can have different timers for each tank. I am not sure how you trigger the basket going into the dip tanks. Is it operator controlled or some type of sensor? What determines how long it stays it the tanks? I am not at work right now but will check back tomorrow if you need more help.

I don't know quick panels. I would use a Redlion G3 and do data logging in it.
How do you select which basket was dipped in which order? Do you use recipes in a automatic operation or is it a manual operation?

Mark Buskell said:

I am not sure how you trigger the basket going into the dip tanks. Is it operator controlled or some type of sensor? What determines how long it stays it the tanks? I am not at work right now but will check back tomorrow if you need more help.

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There is a prox sensor that triggers a timer to start and as long as it is made, the timer continues. It stops as soon as the prox sensor breaks. The preset for the timers are set by the operator's prior to the basket being dipped. This is where we are having the trouble. Sometimes the operator's forget to change the value prior to the cycle or they are unsure that the correct value was set. The operator views a marquee that gives them the timers' accumulator value so they know when to remove the basket of parts.

JeffKiper said:

I don't know quick panels. I would use a Redlion G3 and do data logging in it.
How do you select which basket was dipped in which order? Do you use recipes in a automatic operation or is it a manual operation?

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At the present time, it is still a pretty manual operation. I don't have an option for switching the HMI, for now. If (God forbid) the Quick Panel dies, I will then be contacting you for a Red Lion HMI. I have heard that they are all-around much easier to program/use than the Quick Panel.

Anytime you are doing a system in manual mode there are going to be major issues. I would suggest after the time is done and the proxy is clear you clear the preset. This still allows that operator to have flexibility.

I would look at a time based sequencing system. Each tank is a step with xx amount if time. Every part get dipped in every tank. If the time is 0 it gets skipped. So now you can make a system that allows you to schedule everything in a database system and the that sent to the PLC or HMI.

Step, time in seconds
1, 30
2, 0
3, 0
4, 45
5,90
6,0
7,63

So in my example the basket would only be in tank 1 for 30 sec then 4 for 45, 5 for 90,7 for 63. It skips over the unused tanks.