snaggletto
Member
- Join Date
- Jul 2004
- Posts
- 61
Hello,
I'm new to PLC's and into hobby level automation of CNC/manual machine tools.
I've got a small CNC lathe (bad controls) with an 8 position rotary tool turret. It's rotated by a small 24VDC gear motor and uses some type of sensors (not an encoder, but this might be a better way of doing it?) to 'read' the turrets' 8 positions.
I'm using CNC control software that runs off a standard PC and uses the 25pin parallel port for very limited digital IO. This toolchanger problem would require more IO than I have available. It seems like this would be a great little project (learning experience) for a small/inexpensive PLC.
I would need to communicate with the PLC via the 0 or 5V digital output of my parallel port. Hopefully, I could set it up so that when I programmed an 'M06 T02' in the CNC software the PLC would rotate the turret to tool position #2 etc... Maybe I could do shortest route logic so that the PLC would compare the current and commanded postion and pick whether to rotate CW or CCW.
I've been looking at the DL05 or DL06 fixed IO PLC's at Automation Direct. They seem to be pretty affordable and possibly a good learning platform.
Any recomendations for what PLC, PLC software etc. might be a good learning platform (inexpensive) for this type of application? Any other feedback on what PLC features like analog/discrete IO, programming functions, memory, counting capability would be needed for a application like this would be great. Thanks.
I'm new to PLC's and into hobby level automation of CNC/manual machine tools.
I've got a small CNC lathe (bad controls) with an 8 position rotary tool turret. It's rotated by a small 24VDC gear motor and uses some type of sensors (not an encoder, but this might be a better way of doing it?) to 'read' the turrets' 8 positions.
I'm using CNC control software that runs off a standard PC and uses the 25pin parallel port for very limited digital IO. This toolchanger problem would require more IO than I have available. It seems like this would be a great little project (learning experience) for a small/inexpensive PLC.
I would need to communicate with the PLC via the 0 or 5V digital output of my parallel port. Hopefully, I could set it up so that when I programmed an 'M06 T02' in the CNC software the PLC would rotate the turret to tool position #2 etc... Maybe I could do shortest route logic so that the PLC would compare the current and commanded postion and pick whether to rotate CW or CCW.
I've been looking at the DL05 or DL06 fixed IO PLC's at Automation Direct. They seem to be pretty affordable and possibly a good learning platform.
Any recomendations for what PLC, PLC software etc. might be a good learning platform (inexpensive) for this type of application? Any other feedback on what PLC features like analog/discrete IO, programming functions, memory, counting capability would be needed for a application like this would be great. Thanks.