Hi all,
Great forum you have here !!
I am not a programmer, but have some basic ability to work with PLC's.
(Rudimentary use of RSLinx, RSLogix 500, RSLogix 5000)
My question is really just, "Is this even possible"
My customer has a steam sterilizer with a SLC 5/05 PLC. (It has an ethernet port on the CPU module, which is not in use.
The PLC has a Basic module which sends sterilization cycle print data to a nearby serial printer via RS232. The printed data consists of the sterilization cycle recipe parameters for the cycle that has just been started (time, temp, drying time, etc, etc) and a minute by minute one-line status print of all temperatures including time of day, and cycle phase transition points occurring during the cycle, such as "Heating Up", "Sterilization Hold" and "Drying" ...also any alarms that occur on the sterilizer as well as things like "Operator Alarm Acknowledge" .
The customer wants to get rid of the serial printer and modify the PLC so it sends print data out the ethernet port, to a paperless Yokogawa chart recorder (Data Aquisition unit, or DAQ for short) which will supposedly send it out to their network where it can be stored on their server and accessed by/printed out by a local PC w/printer.
Forget the Yokogawa recorder for now, just wondering what it would take to get the PLC sending print data out the ethernet port . Are we looking at a large amount of changes to the application program?
Would or could the print data still be in ASCII format? (I assume its in ASCII since it currently goes straight to a serial printer.
Note: I will not be doing the programming, this would be farmed out.
Any advice or wisdom would be appreciated. I will closely follow this thread and try my best to answer questions if you have any for me.
Great forum you have here !!
I am not a programmer, but have some basic ability to work with PLC's.
(Rudimentary use of RSLinx, RSLogix 500, RSLogix 5000)
My question is really just, "Is this even possible"
My customer has a steam sterilizer with a SLC 5/05 PLC. (It has an ethernet port on the CPU module, which is not in use.
The PLC has a Basic module which sends sterilization cycle print data to a nearby serial printer via RS232. The printed data consists of the sterilization cycle recipe parameters for the cycle that has just been started (time, temp, drying time, etc, etc) and a minute by minute one-line status print of all temperatures including time of day, and cycle phase transition points occurring during the cycle, such as "Heating Up", "Sterilization Hold" and "Drying" ...also any alarms that occur on the sterilizer as well as things like "Operator Alarm Acknowledge" .
The customer wants to get rid of the serial printer and modify the PLC so it sends print data out the ethernet port, to a paperless Yokogawa chart recorder (Data Aquisition unit, or DAQ for short) which will supposedly send it out to their network where it can be stored on their server and accessed by/printed out by a local PC w/printer.
Forget the Yokogawa recorder for now, just wondering what it would take to get the PLC sending print data out the ethernet port . Are we looking at a large amount of changes to the application program?
Would or could the print data still be in ASCII format? (I assume its in ASCII since it currently goes straight to a serial printer.
Note: I will not be doing the programming, this would be farmed out.
Any advice or wisdom would be appreciated. I will closely follow this thread and try my best to answer questions if you have any for me.