Student asking for advice on building motion control trainer

plchris · Aug 26, 2016

Hey y'all this is my first post. I'm 34, from east TN, and been doing maintenance in factories since my first job after high school. I'm about to start my 7th trimester of night classes in industrial electricity.

The school had mostly basic plc trainers, slc's or micrologix, lights and pushbuttons, one trainer had analog. No steppers or servo control.

I built a home trainer (compactlogix L31, combo IO module, an IO box).
I borrow a laptop with v15 RSLogix 5000 from work.

I have learned so much and now I want to learn motion control. I was looking at using amci 3601 CompactLogix Motion Controller (under $100 from ebay).
It would be nice to use my current hardware but i can always sell it and buy different.

Any recommendations? On a $1000 budget. Thanks

JaxGTO · Aug 26, 2016

Your not going to get anything AB for that. At least not new, so ebay would be the place to shop.
You might be able to get an Kinetix 300 or 350 used for that. They will run on as low as 120vac single phase.

Also to use motion commands the Compact Logix will have to have the M in the part number.

Peter Nachtwey · Aug 26, 2016

I have a deal for you.
We have on-line motion controllers and free software you can down load.
http://deltamotion.com/education/online_rmcs/online_rmcs.php
This is free but if you want a kick starter we have training courses.
http://deltamotion.com/education/

You won't be able to get much of a trainer for $1000. I know the ones we make cost about $3K to $4K or more

I bet a lot of motion controller vendors have on-line motion controllers and software.

Ron Beaufort · Aug 26, 2016

for the initial "just getting started" part of your motion control education, you probably won't need to buy anything at all - at least if I understand the list that you gave of the hardware and the software that you have available ...

just set up a new Motion Group ... then give it a New Axis - and set the axis up as a "virtual axis" ...

then set up a Trend to graph the ".ActualPosition" and the ".ActualVelocity" of the virtual axis ...

you should be able to "drive" the virtual axis back-and-forth along an imaginary track by using "motion" instructions such as MAM (Motion Axis Move) and MAJ (Motion Axis Jog) - and see the results of different settings for the various parameters - such as Accel, Decel, Jerk, etc. ...

see the graphs in these two posts for ideas ...

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=676568&postcount=2

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=511502&postcount=2

after you've gotten used to how the virtual axis works (by reading the trend graph) then you can think about spending some money on some "real world" equipment ... to be honest though, I've got a hunch that you'll learn plenty by just working with the virtual axis ...

TIP: if you can't make much headway with this approach, I recommend that you go as far as you can - and then post the resulting .ACD file here in this thread ... (note that some of the forum members - myself included - will not open files stored in "drop boxes" or in the "cloud") ... just zip the .ACD file (forum rule) and post it right here as an attachment to this thread ... the forum members will try to help you get this working ...

good luck with it ... and welcome to the forum ...

plchris · Sep 7, 2016

JaxGTO said:
Your not going to get anything AB for that. At least not new, so ebay would be the place to shop.
You might be able to get an Kinetix 300 or 350 used for that. They will run on as low as 120vac single phase.

Also to use motion commands the Compact Logix will have to have the M in the part number.

I've looked into the Kinetix 3 (using a micro 850 and CCW software), the 300 and 350 as well as amci 3601. There is so much to choose from and consider. I have read what feels like hundreds of pdfs.

Peter Nachtwey said:
I have a deal for you.
We have on-line motion controllers and free software you can down load.
http://deltamotion.com/education/online_rmcs/online_rmcs.php
This is free but if you want a kick starter we have training courses.
http://deltamotion.com/education/

You won't be able to get much of a trainer for $1000. I know the ones we make cost about $3K to $4K or more

I bet a lot of motion controller vendors have on-line motion controllers and software.

I was able to connect and will be doing some work with this, very interesting thanks.

Ron Beaufort said:
for the initial "just getting started" part of your motion control education, you probably won't need to buy anything at all - at least if I understand the list that you gave of the hardware and the software that you have available ...

just set up a new Motion Group ... then give it a New Axis - and set the axis up as a "virtual axis" ...

then set up a Trend to graph the ".ActualPosition" and the ".ActualVelocity" of the virtual axis ...

you should be able to "drive" the virtual axis back-and-forth along an imaginary track by using "motion" instructions such as MAM (Motion Axis Move) and MAJ (Motion Axis Jog) - and see the results of different settings for the various parameters - such as Accel, Decel, Jerk, etc. ...

see the graphs in these two posts for ideas ...

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=676568&postcount=2

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=511502&postcount=2

after you've gotten used to how the virtual axis works (by reading the trend graph) then you can think about spending some money on some "real world" equipment ... to be honest though, I've got a hunch that you'll learn plenty by just working with the virtual axis ...

TIP: if you can't make much headway with this approach, I recommend that you go as far as you can - and then post the resulting .ACD file here in this thread ... (note that some of the forum members - myself included - will not open files stored in "drop boxes" or in the "cloud") ... just zip the .ACD file (forum rule) and post it right here as an attachment to this thread ... the forum members will try to help you get this working ...

good luck with it ... and welcome to the forum ...

Thank you. This was great. I set up many virtual axis projects with success. I am wanting to setup something using the servo axis simulator you used.

Student asking for advice on building motion control trainer

plchris

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JaxGTO

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Peter Nachtwey

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Ron Beaufort

Lifetime Supporting Member

plchris

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