Controls_Engineer79
Member
i have a machine in our shop that is designed to put groves in pipeing to fit belts on the pipe sections to turn them into conveyor rollers.
the system is run with a micrologix 1200 series plc, right now the machine has 2 modes. mode 1 is it just cuts the pipe to length but doesnt add the grooves. Mode two is where it adds a double groove to the one end and then cuts the pipe to length.
my boss wants me to add additional functionality to the machine where by you can also select two additional modes - 1 where it adds a single groove the other where it adds the double groove at the front end and then stops, waits for the operator to swap the pipe around then grooves the other end of the pipe segment.
My problem is this, i was able to contact the orginal machine builder and get the electrical drawings and copys of the plc program (of which there are 5 different ones?) but whoever programed it did so in a method im not overly familar with (tons of subroutines) so im wondering - would it be easier for me to start from scratch and build a new program with the added functionality - using the existing program as my guild, or would i be better off trying to modifiy the existing code?
the system is run with a micrologix 1200 series plc, right now the machine has 2 modes. mode 1 is it just cuts the pipe to length but doesnt add the grooves. Mode two is where it adds a double groove to the one end and then cuts the pipe to length.
my boss wants me to add additional functionality to the machine where by you can also select two additional modes - 1 where it adds a single groove the other where it adds the double groove at the front end and then stops, waits for the operator to swap the pipe around then grooves the other end of the pipe segment.
My problem is this, i was able to contact the orginal machine builder and get the electrical drawings and copys of the plc program (of which there are 5 different ones?) but whoever programed it did so in a method im not overly familar with (tons of subroutines) so im wondering - would it be easier for me to start from scratch and build a new program with the added functionality - using the existing program as my guild, or would i be better off trying to modifiy the existing code?