Receipt style printing from PV Plus/Control Logix system

Hi there,

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or ideas on a solution to be able to print to a "receipt" style POS printer from a PV Plus or Control Logix system?

I know the new PV Plus 6 systems support a bunch of plug and play USB printers as listed here:
http://rockwellautomation.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/111636/kw/111636

The customer specifically wants a robust POS receipt style printer though.

The application will be for truck drivers to do a CIP wash after unloading dairy product.

Most of the logic for the CIP wash is already there. I just have to add an interface for the drivers to be able to select a wash type, then be able to generate an invoice/receipt once the wash is completed with a few details like wash type, time, cost, etc.

I have found a printer that has a USB connection and has drivers for Windows CE, but I am not sure how I would integrate this on the Panelview, or if it would even work at all.

http://www.starmicronics.com.au/index.php?mainId=100067&Cid=100067&PageType=leftmenu

Any ideas?

http://rockwellautomation.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/28334

Looks like I may be able to do what I want with a serial connected receipt printer.

We use Serial printing all the time out of the Logix processor if you don't need CH0 for anything else. Printing serially out of the PV+ is not the easiest to setup or change for that matter.

mflaugh said:

We use Serial printing all the time out of the Logix processor if you don't need CH0 for anything else. Printing serially out of the PV+ is not the easiest to setup or change for that matter.

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That does seem like the easiest option.

The PLC is around 50+ meters and multiple rooms away from where we want the HMI and printer though, which is why I'm going to try printing from the HMI first.

Something to fall back on at least.

Thanks.

mflaugh said:

We use Serial printing all the time out of the Logix processor if you don't need CH0 for anything else. Printing serially out of the PV+ is not the easiest to setup or change for that matter.

Click to expand...

I too need to source a serial printer for our machines. I intend to print from a Micrologix 1400. Failing this I will do it from the User interface which I've developed in C#.

What kind of printer are you using? Do you recommend it?

MorphuisOGrady said:

I too need to source a serial printer for our machines. I intend to print from a Micrologix 1400. Failing this I will do it from the User interface which I've developed in C#.

What kind of printer are you using? Do you recommend it?

Click to expand...

From the research that I've done over the past couple of days the Epson TM-T88 series seems to be widely used in the POS world. Have seen it used in a lot of examples for serial printing from PLCs/HMIs also.

If you don't mind running Cat5 from the PLC to the printer, you can use a pair of Perle SDS to bridge serial to ethernet and back.

MorphuisOGrady said:

I too need to source a serial printer for our machines. I intend to print from a Micrologix 1400. Failing this I will do it from the User interface which I've developed in C#.

What kind of printer are you using? Do you recommend it?

Click to expand...

We use a couple of printers depending upon the circumstance. Our standard, if we don't need a receipt style printer, is an Epson LX300. Very few regular size printers have a serial port anymore. The nice thing is that it is available in 230V/50Hz when we need to ship overseas.

For our receipt style printers, we use Omniprint PM192. Small, 24VDC, 40 column printing. It is an ink printer not thermal.

We've programmed reports from most of the Micrologix series. The only thing we've run into is that it runs out of memory really fast when you are filling data tables with STring types.