Milacron Electric injection molder

Hi All
I'm "inheriting" a mid 90's Milacron press that they say has a mussed up controller.
I think it has Fanuc hardware.
I have pretty good experience controlling velocity and pressure with hydraulics with just proportional valves open loop
I'd like to use an Allen bradley plc with some kind of motor controls.
I expect to dummy it up a little. The only feedback-loops required would be for pressure.
Velocity is not as critical.
Is there anyone that would/could help ?
Or point me in the right direction?
I'm in SE Ky.
Thanks !!

You would need to provide more info.
What Milacron unit do you have?
Does it have a Fanuc control or not?
Does it have hydraulics?
What is your intention for the motor controls? If it has hydraulics you probably wouldn't need a VFD on the pump ...
Can you post a photo or anything to get some interest started?

Maybe I asked too soon as it's not here yet.
It's an all electric (servo motors) 165 ton Milacron Roboshot. .
I thought all of their electrics used Fanuc.
It's now located in Bridgeview, Il if anyone wanted to go by,
take a look and quote new controls. It's at a shop owned by a pal of mine.
We're both in the molding business and I get by installing relatively simple plc controls in my presses..all open loop, but really am not "that" skilled.
Thanks for the reply !

dougpdf said:

...
We're both in the molding business and I get by installing relatively simple plc controls in my presses..all open loop...

Click to expand...

The fact that it uses servo motors means you may have to use the drives that come with it.
If all of the servo drives are there and working, you should be able to get that old dog working with a Micrologix PLC, something like a 1766-L32AWAA.
It's got Analog inputs that you can connect to to a pressure transducer.
12 bit though, so the resolution may be an issue, probably not though.
Hook up an HMI, a few prox switches, and safety interlocks and you're good to go.
Good Luck!

You make it sound easy...
but that's what I was hoping to hear.
Thanks
Doug

I suspect it won't be quite that easy. The Roboshot appears to be controlled by a Fanuc i series CNC with an add-on software package. Those drives would be extremely difficult to control with a PLC.
I don't know how Fanuc's tech support is today, but at one time they wouldn't even talk to you unless you were a distribtor.

dougpdf, how far did you get with this? I handle automation programming at the metal fab show I work at. Our sister company is a plastics company with a Cincinnati Milacron blow mold machine that sat idle for so long that the controller lost the program. Milacron seems to want a mint for the Pware software, plus they say we need to find a Pentium 1 computer that runs DOS to handle Pware, so we're inspired to look at other options. We have talked briefly about redoing the controller with AB stuff as well, but I have to get up to speed on how the machine operates. I've done machines with new components from Automation Direct, and I've done a lot of machine overhauls using older AB components (SLC500 and ControlLogix) from eBay that have worked out just fine. I'm curious if you decided to tackle it and how it went.

Hi Cevin
We have not taken this one...yet. The press is still 450 miles away and it's undecided if they're going to send it down here or not.
A little research show's that the Fanuc drives and motors on this piece are not user friendly for accessing. If we have to replace 6 servo motors and drives, it's not cost effective. So, we're not sure what we're going to do.