5 supply pipes, hooking up to 7 possible recievers: HMI recipe design

Oh boy! Another HMI design possibility just fell in my lap! I'm stuck on one thing, though... I'm not sure what to recommend for input signals/hardware. I'm hoping you guys have some ideas.

They want a HMI that's programmed for recipes. I've been working with the Red Lion HMIs and I'll be looking at using them for this project. The part that I'm not sure about pertains to the inputs that would confirm the correct connections have been made.

Specifically: They have 5 "feed" pipes that can be hooked up to 7 "receiver" pipes in any combination. For instance, the recipe might call out for feed pipe 3 to hook into receiver pipe 6. I've got to come up with a system for that confirmation, and for all permutations.

The first thing that comes to mind is RFID. BUT.... I have no experience with that, other than stopping at the booths at tech shows. Anybody with an opinion on this? It seems to me that there would have to be 5 "readers"... which may or may not be practical.

The second idea would be using a wire that you plug in once the pipe connection is made. (thinking out loud)... not sure the best way to distinguish which feed pipe was hooked to which receiver other than testing each wire connection one at a time. Hmmm...

Any other thoughts??? I've only thought about this for 15 min, but I told the guy I'd get back to him on Monday.

What kind of network technologies do you have available to you, and what sort of logic controllers ?

If you can do a non-contact ID sensor, that would be ideal from a robustness point of view.

I've done systems with high-cycle removable automation connectors a few times and man, it's really, REALLY hard on connectors. And these were in clean rooms ! The users just beat the heck out of the connectors, jamming them in offset, twisting the bases, dropping them cable ends on to the floor.. it was just really bad. And these connectors were also responsible for connecting to remote I/O, so we had bad reliability for those remote sensors.

The low-cost method would be to have some jumpers in a connector near the hose, and you could query those with discrete I/O on a cable that rides with the hose. Make sure the removable cable side is the Female side, so you don't have an exposed +24V pin.

Let's say you had a common 5-pin "Eurofast" 18mm connector. Make the center pin the +24V DC source and you need three inputs to code the pipe identity.

001 = Pipe 1
010 = Pipe 2
011 = Pipe 3
100 = Pipe 4
101 = Pipe 5
110 = Pipe 6
111 = Pipe 7

I've done this in the past. You can find a detailed writeup here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/212441715...ctions-Among-Port-Manifolds-for-the-Process-I

James, that is a fantastic paper ! Thank you for posting !

Ken.... I'm designing it from scratch, so whatever I need. I'm thinking about using a Red Lion G3 and an Automationdirect PLC. I need to find out if Red Lion has wholesale pricing for guys like me, and I'm just assuming they'll have a driver for the Automation Direct PLC.

I hadn't thought of using binary for identification. Interesting, I'll chew on that....

I'm starting to think the RFID would be overkill, and too complex for this situation. I'd still like to be able get some experience with this someday.

So far... I've been thinking about a simpler system with one hot wire and one feedback wire on the female side, and a PLC input wire and "jumper" to feedback pin on the male side. I could program the PLC to do a test routine before activating the system where each of the 5, +24 cables would get activated for 1 second each, one at a time. Each connection would be checked against the recipe, and if it passed, a bit would latch for that connection. If all 5 bits latched "on", the system would activate. If they failed, you could see on the HMI which connection failed. The feedback wire would be used to confirm that a connection had been made with the male plug, and provide a fail-safe if the connection is unplugged.

Total I/O.... 5 outputs, 12 inputs

I also think I'd make short connector cables that connected to a terminal block on one end so they could be easily changed out as they became worn or damaged.

Now this is what I've come up with BEFORE reading James' paper.

since this is from scratch, use diverter valves with limit switches to conform their open / closed status to pipe a or b. the valves can be either single solenoid or double solenoid and write code to monitor the status of the switch.

that's a lot of pipe networking ! what is the application?
there may be an easier solution.

regards,
james

I don't know the application yet. I met a equipment supplier who saw my work reconstructing a large plastic extrusion machine that my customer bought in the second-hand market. I got it working, then showed him some modifications I made in WonderWare for some new features. His eyes lit up, and he said, "I think I'm going to have some work coming your way." I just spoke with him and got the basics today. I'll call his customer Monday and get more specifics. I just wanted to think about how I'd do it in advance of our first contact.

here's a possible solution.

using a piece of paper

on the top left side is the 5 feed pipes going from left to right. each pipe feeds a screw conveyor with 7 outlets.
each outlet has a slide gate with limit switches. these slide gates drop product onto a conveyor belt running top to bottom on the page that supply your 7 lines or what ever they are.

so you have 5 feed pipes going into 5 screw conveyors.
each screw conveyor has 7 slide gates. each slide gate has a valve and 2 limit switches.

these screw conveyors feed the 7 belt conveyors which feed the 7 other lines.

hope this helps,
james

brian you are thinking simple and easy, i like the idea.
yes scanning would be best way your 5 outputs are needed for each feeder.
however 12 are needed 7 for the receivers, and 5 for the not used feeders
on the HMI is a simple Matrix.
it gives the results from your scan and the needed from the recipe. When the operator looks at the screen he can see what is needed, in yellow, in green the correct ones and in red the faulty ones.
If you are using codesys i have made a visu for you.

Shooter.... Yes, you're right. I forgot about the feedback connections.

I like simple when it's warranted. My main job is to fix things that break, and an overly complex system may seem cool at first, but it can really be a drag when something isn't working right.

I'm going to post a question about a RFID system, but I think I'll do it separately.

the recipe isimple
1B
2D
3A
where the digits are the feeders, and the letters are the receivers.

electrical with some connectors (6 pins is enough, cheap SUB D is good for this. on each feeder make at the end of thpipe a connector ann inside the housing a diode :in pipe 1 from pin 6 to pin 1
in pipe 2 from to pin 2 etc
on the receivers you may use a parallel of 7 inputs.
now you have a nice matrix
set output 1 on and check if you see input and on which input. assume it is a B
2 will be D
3 on A etc.