Have a customer with a single axis CNC machine. It's fairly simple. The system is a SLC 5/03 with a Panelview 550, an Ultra200 servo drive. The SLC interacts with the servo drive via a 1746-HS card, otherwise known as IMC 110. This card has a very large cable that connects it to a breakout board, which the leads from the servo cable connect to.
The issue I'm having is the homing. The IMC has certain words mapped to the SLC memory for status indication, commands, etc. So the card being in Slot 1, the address for say, home, is I:1.1/5. From what I can tell, even though it's a CNC it's not even doing position control, just straight velocity control.
The problem I'm having is that when the homing limit switch is physically made, I have power on the terminal on the breakout board, the LED light for the Fast input on the breakout board is lit up, but if I'm online with the PLC the bit associated with home does not change to 1. What will then happen is the servo will drive the apparatus past the homing switch into the overtravel limit switch, breaking the E-Stop loop on the breakout board, and causing an E-Stop fault in the IMC. When this happens, the OEM smartly decided to force the Panelview to stay on the Homing screen and not allow the user to reset the fault and jog the servo down. The ball screw must be physically decoupled from the motor and manually spun to get it off the overtravel. In order to avoid this, it requires manually moving it with the Control Panel in UltraMaster, which is on my laptop, 40 minutes away from the customer in my office most of the time. They don't have any capability of getting online with anything.
The kicker is this doesn't happen consistently. I'll get there, hook up, and it wll work repeatedly. I'll even cycle power and it will come back from a power up. I had the customer check the limit switch, and they said it's okay. Like I said I checked voltages at the terminals on the breakout board and those are also behaving predictably.
My only recourse is that there might be something wrong with the IMC or the breakout board, or the cable in between, but all of them are in a fairly clean panel and aren't moved a whole lot. I called Rockwell TechConnect and support for these is not included in the Toolkit, and when I mentioned the module to the rep, he said, and I quote: "never heard of it."
I feel like the IMC modules are like secret agents. If they're discovered, the home office disavows all knowledge of their existence.
The issue I'm having is the homing. The IMC has certain words mapped to the SLC memory for status indication, commands, etc. So the card being in Slot 1, the address for say, home, is I:1.1/5. From what I can tell, even though it's a CNC it's not even doing position control, just straight velocity control.
The problem I'm having is that when the homing limit switch is physically made, I have power on the terminal on the breakout board, the LED light for the Fast input on the breakout board is lit up, but if I'm online with the PLC the bit associated with home does not change to 1. What will then happen is the servo will drive the apparatus past the homing switch into the overtravel limit switch, breaking the E-Stop loop on the breakout board, and causing an E-Stop fault in the IMC. When this happens, the OEM smartly decided to force the Panelview to stay on the Homing screen and not allow the user to reset the fault and jog the servo down. The ball screw must be physically decoupled from the motor and manually spun to get it off the overtravel. In order to avoid this, it requires manually moving it with the Control Panel in UltraMaster, which is on my laptop, 40 minutes away from the customer in my office most of the time. They don't have any capability of getting online with anything.
The kicker is this doesn't happen consistently. I'll get there, hook up, and it wll work repeatedly. I'll even cycle power and it will come back from a power up. I had the customer check the limit switch, and they said it's okay. Like I said I checked voltages at the terminals on the breakout board and those are also behaving predictably.
My only recourse is that there might be something wrong with the IMC or the breakout board, or the cable in between, but all of them are in a fairly clean panel and aren't moved a whole lot. I called Rockwell TechConnect and support for these is not included in the Toolkit, and when I mentioned the module to the rep, he said, and I quote: "never heard of it."
I feel like the IMC modules are like secret agents. If they're discovered, the home office disavows all knowledge of their existence.
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