PowerFlex 525 will not start thru Ethernet. Have a Ready signal in Controller Tags

Cydog

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Feb 2018
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Good Afternoon ,

I have several new PowerFlex 525 drives. 5 drives out of 17 will start thru my Compactlogix start signal . The rest will not start. I have no Errors or Yellow Triangles . I have the IP Addresses and Subnet's set . I do have a ready ( 1 ) in the PowerFlex 525 Input Tags. Below is the signals that I have coming from the PowerFlex 525.

M30 ( One of the Drives that is starting )
Ready -1
Command Dir -1
Actual Dir -1
CommFreqCnt -1
CommLogicCnt -1

M36 ( One of the Drives NOT running )
Ready -1
Command Dir -1
Actual Dir -1
CommFreqCnt - 0
CommLogicCnt - 0

I pinged the drives , and they returned their IP Addresses.
I did the same procedure when creating them. I did select the ADC feature in the Drive Properties .

Have any of you experienced this .

Thanks so much in advance ,
 
I don't know if this is your problem without seeing your logic but on the Powerflex drives a stop signal must be seen before the drive will respond to a run command. When the start command is off the stop command should be on and the start command shouldn't be allowed to come on until you've confirmed the stop command is off.
 
Ok.

This is what I have........

HMI Start M36
-------I I--------------------Start Powerflex 525

HMI Start M36
-------I/I--------------------Stop Powerflex 525

It is the same tag . When the operator will let off it will stop.

Thanks .
 
Check EVERY SINGLE PARAMETER. Years ago, I spent hours troubleshooting a AB VFD, turns out there was a "mask" bit or something on the start signal. AFAIK, the drive was new from the factory.
 
Thanks . You sound like Clark Griswold's dad on Christmas Vacation , about checking all the Christmas bulbs :) LOL
 
Sometimes I still have that dream where I was writing beautifully crafted, carefully illustrated, well-tested Knowledgebase articles that thousands of people relied on for guidance and clarity.

Instead I go drinking with other former technical writers at the Tacoma Comedy Club and laugh our butts off on Thursday nights.

stop signal must be seen before the drive will respond to a run command.

It's actually the opposite: the STOP signal must be seen as FALSE before the time that the START signal goes from a FALSE -> TRUE transition.

The easy way to program around it is to hold the STOP bit true only long enough to get the RUNNING bit to go false.

Also, hold the Start bit true only as long as it takes to confirm that he drive has started.

I'm not as familiar with the PowerFlex 525 tag syntax so I can't give you a screenshot example. It's been discussed quite a lot on this Forum.
 
Thanks Ken. I may have worded my answer incorrectly but that is basically what I was trying to say, as illustrated in my screenshot where it say the stop output signal must be logic 0 before the start output signal is switched to logic 1.
 
I'm sorry , guys. I read and thought that when you choose Ethernet / IP that the start signals , speed reference , etc. defaulted to Ethernet / IP. The start was set to kepad and speed reference was the pot.

I'm glad you brought up about the PowerFlex 525 Start / Stop. I'll review that.

Thanks again
 
525 Is a Safe-Off VFD.

The safe off terminals are factory shipped with a shorting jumper.

If safe off is part of your design with jumper removed and your design sourcing dual-Channel to the safety inputs, you must also provide the DC common from your source to the DC common to the digital IO terminal on the VFD as a reference for the two safety inputs.

Lastly make sure you have terminal 1 and terminal 11 jumpered as well. Thus is also factory installed.
 
... the STOP signal must be seen as FALSE before the time that the START signal goes from a FALSE -> TRUE transition.

The easy way to program around it is to hold the STOP bit true only long enough to get the RUNNING bit to go false.

You would think that they could make a firmware change to tolerate i dunno say a 100ms overlap of stop and start being asserted and still work. I seem to recall the exact same problem with hardwired drives 20 years ago (was either the 160 series or 1305) and they fixed that issue with a firmware change.

I guess recommending that the users add timing relays or other extra relay logic to drives run by selector switches to get around the issue was not a viable answer at that time.

But extra PLC code is free, right?

I know I am nit picking, but I don't like to see a problem that is solved and then resurface in subsequent products.
 
Cydog said:
I'm sorry , guys. I read and thought that when you choose Ethernet / IP that the start signals (Parameter 046 [Start Source 1]), speed reference (Parameter 047 [Speed Reference 1]), etc. defaulted to Ethernet / IP. The start was set to keypad and speed reference was the pot...

(I've added in the Parameter Info above...)

You're not the first to forget these parameter settings and you won't be the last...

544547 - PowerFlex 525 drive: Drive setup over Ethernet: Logic command and Datalinks (supported)
Access Level: Everyone

Also some of the fault finding tips discussed here and more...

551195 - PowerFlex 525/523 Drive Will Not Start Over EtherNet - Not Enabled
Access Level: Everyone

Post Analytical Observation: My initial thoughts reading down through the thread, where the Stop/Start logic was being questioned, were why are only 5 specific drives not starting out of a total 17? If the Stop/Start logic was incorrect and likely to cause "race conditions", and assuming the same logic used for each drive, then why were the false starts not random in number and affected drive? This should lead us to the conclusion that the logic is likely OK and something "else" specific to these 5 drives (wiring, parameters, etc.) must be the root cause.

Just something to ponder the next time we see a similar issue, and we will be seeing this again, no doubt.

Regards,
George
 
OkiePC said:
You would think that they could make a firmware change to tolerate i dunno say a 100ms overlap of stop and start being asserted and still work...

I'm not going to get into the "discussion" on how or why they do what they do with regard to the Stop/Start of these drives, but when I read your comments you reminded me of something firmware related for these drives which is somewhat important to know and relevant to the "discussion"...

588362 - PowerFlex 525: Ready Bit is 0 When the Stop Command is Issued
Access Level: Everyone

At firmware revision 3.xxx for these drives, they introduced a new advanced parameter -

Parameter A574 [RdyBit Mode Cfg]

This now gives us the ability to select whether we want to use the original firmware 1.xxx function or later firmware 2.xxx function for the Ready bit status when a Stop is asserted.

So they do "play around" with these features in between firmware releases, Paul.

Discuss...
 
Ethernet/IP

I'm sorry , guys. I read and thought that when you choose Ethernet / IP that the start signals , speed reference , etc. defaulted to Ethernet / IP. The start was set to kepad and speed reference was the pot.

I'm glad you brought up about the PowerFlex 525 Start / Stop. I'll review that.

Thanks again

Ahhh, yes, we got stuck on this.

The 525 has a single embedded Ethernet/IP port... But if you have installed a two-port DLR communication cart talking Ethernet/IP... You must set your start command and speed reference to OPTion.card and not Ethernet/ IP
 

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