Recent Graduate

[yuzu]

Hi everyone

Firstly I just want to thank everyone for their time and effort in this forum! I had just recently graduated as an Electronics and Communications Engineer, and as such have no real knowledge of process control, except for the single Process Control unit in third year.

I have started as a graduate project engineer with a small mining company and am now responsible for the up-grade of their current Citect 5.3, AB PLC 5/03 system to Citect 6 and to 5/04's.

I have read through ALL of the documentation as well as most of the forum posts here , and will be going for training in November.

The system is basically the control of several relays, opening and closing. The system would just suddenly freeze and ALL relays would open. The only way out of it would be to reset the computer. It is operating as a standalone, single PC system to single MCC.

The operator thinks that it is a computer hardware issue, not a PLC issue. The system is pretty old... The program itself does not ahve any sensors or indicators to advise as to whether or not the relays are really open, or if the computer itself is having problems, and then telling Citect to open all the relays. No error messages are issued either.

Due to this, the manager has asked me to setup a remote access so he can monitor the system from elsewhere, but I have no idea what I should do. There is currently no net access from that point. Would it just be the case of setting up a VPN?

Any help at all would be fantastic! Why did the problem pop up before my training?

 

[CaseyK]

I try to suspect the PC first.

Since it had worked, then try to figure out why it stopped working.

List all the possibibilities of why it wouldn't work.

Is there a failsafe? I try to insert a manual backup for critical processes. A bypass so to speak.

Is there any wiring documentation. How about an experienced electrician or technician?

regards.....casey



What kind of training are you going to be taking?

 

[yuzu]

I will be in Perth for Citect and AB PLC training
trying to decide now if I should do 2 sepearte courses,
respectively from Citect and the Rockwell academy,
or go with ATS who combine the two into the one course

then i have to prepare the report as to whether it is worth it to up-grade to Citect 6 and the 5/04

after that i will be thrown into one of their projects up there for practical training!
all rather over-whelming!!

thanks again for your time

with WAN access
in the User Manual,
there is a refernce to CiNet,
but states that this is no longer Supported,
and there is not much documentation

and to use RAS,
what do you guys think?

 

[Alan Case]

If there is only one PLC then there is no advantage in changing to a 504.
The 503 can talk DF1 or DH485 while the 504 will talk these 2 protocols as well as DH+. Unless there is something I am missing the change is a waste of money. Now if you went to a 505 processor (DF1, DH485 and also ethernet) and used the ENet as the comms to citect then you would notice a difference. 5.3 is a very stable version of citect and I would not recommend an upgrade to 6 unless
a) you are in support (ie free)
or
b) you need some of the new features of 6.0 (ie user changeable trends)
Sounds more like you need to correct the mistakes in the existing system more than upgrade.
As for training I would recommend AB training from Rockwell followed by Citect training by Citect. These guys know their own product better than 3rd party trainers. Try not to do the Citect training before the PLC training.
I have never been to Christmas Island so if you need a hand.

Also just re-reading your post: Citect has an engineering division who is good at Citect but **** at everything else. They use the PLC in a process as dumb IO, ie the PLC has no logic at all, everything is controlled from the citect PC. When the PC freezes so does all the PLC outputs. They may have done the original program and this may be what is happening. Regards Alan Case