Rockwell Automatic Device Configuration experiences

cdrum543

Member
Join Date
Feb 2019
Location
Pennsylvania
Posts
4
Hi everyone, I was just wondering what your thoughts are on using Rockwell's Automatic Device Configuration. How has it worked for you? Have you experienced any issues using it? Tips and tricks. I've read about it, and understand a bit on how it works, not much experience with it past the bench.

I am working on a project and had suggested using ADC since the project involves a large number of PF525 drives. Already using NTRON managed switches which can be setup with Local IP port setup (assign IP to device based on port). PLC is a CompactLogix L33ER. Management had issues using ADC on previous projects and didn't want to risk using it again for this project.

I just want to learn as much as I can about it. Thanks!
 
I have set it up for many customers and they all love it. However, I have always done it with Rockwell Stratix Switches but it should work just as well with another brand switch as long as it has DHCP persistence.

What specific issues did your customer have with it in the past?

The only issue I have found with it is when people on site make changes and upgrade firmware or install a drive or module with newer firmware and changing the keying but forget to save the new firmware to the flash card and if that newer device has to be swapped in the future the correct firmware is not there for ADC.
 
My experience is similar: people not familiar with it make tweaks to drives but don’t know they have to save those changes to the PLC. So everything works fine until there is a power failure or shutdown. When power is restored, ADC sees the different programming and reverts the drive to what it was before and the “tweaker” doesn’t understand why it happened. It’s really just an education thing.

By the way it also works the other way, probably more often. Tweaker thinks he knows better, messes things up, can’t get himself out of it and someone who understands ADC simply cycles power and the drive is put back to original settings.
 
My experience is similar: people not familiar with it make tweaks to drives but don’t know they have to save those changes to the PLC. So everything works fine until there is a power failure or shutdown. When power is restored, ADC sees the different programming and reverts the drive to what it was before and the “tweaker” doesn’t understand why it happened. It’s really just an education thing.

By the way it also works the other way, probably more often. Tweaker thinks he knows better, messes things up, can’t get himself out of it and someone who understands ADC simply cycles power and the drive is put back to original settings.

I have one customer that has this issue all the time. They have all 750 series drives and they have the remote door mounted HIM's so they are easy pickings as the cabinet does not have to be opened and interlocks don't get in the way so the "tweakers" just can't resist.

I keep trying to get them to let's lock down the HIM's at least to some degree but so far no joy. I am starting to think they just love my service calls.
 
Jraef

Your "Tweakers" reminds me of a funny story.

I once upgrade the tension control system on a blown film line and they always had an analog pot to adjust roll tension and a tension feedback meter.

When we automated the system all the adjustments were brought into the PLC / HMI under a secured engineering controls page with very limited plant access.

The boss asked me to have our machine shop fabricate a plate to cover the holes in the existing panel they chose to keep when we removed the pots and meters as they would no longer be used.

Instead, I mapped the input pots to the output meters with slight scaling and very little documentation and when each new shift comes in the say
"first shift doesn't have this tension adjusted right and they will "tweak" the pots until they "get it running right" and they are happy until the next shift comes in and they "tweak"

I found it comes in handy if the operators have something to play with that does no harm, in general, they will leave other things alone.

To this day they still "Tweak" on each shift and the plant engineer is the only person on site that knows the dirty little secret that the automated tension control really does all the work and not the "tweaking" but the pots and meters keep the operators happy.
 
Has it always worked well or did earlier versions have bugs/issues that were fixed with later revisions?

Does the change of any parameter cause the mismatch to where the controller downloads the saved parameters to the drive on power cycle? Say for instance accel and decel?
 

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