JRW,
So whats the winder consist of? Is it a center wind application or surface winder? Is is a Siemens 6SE70?
It's a dual spindle turret paper re-winder with a pair of Simovert Masterdrive VC's on each winding spindle. There's a simovert VC for the turret index motor, as well as a Simovert MC drive as an outfeed nip drive.
Does it have a tech. board? T300 of T400?
The winders have, I think, T400 boards for the coiling application. The documentation I have (OEM supplied) and can find on the website is vague. Apparently, the T300's are no more--that's why I think we have T400's--that's the documentation I find on the web site.
I am sure- if you knew something about Step7,you would never use AB again.
I know this about Siemens--the simovert manual says the drive supplies 32 bits--4 bytes--of status to the profibus--The PLC reads 3 words--2 from the drive--one from the technology board--After you get past the little/big endian thing, the drive documentation is OK but the tech board documentation is very very unclear about what the 16 bits from there represent.
I've used SFC12 on applications where a piece of equipment had to be detached (it had a few drives and ET200S I/O). The operator would press a button on the screen, then detach the folder section. The SFC would "turn off" the slaves- thus the OB's would not be called. Presto- no red lights.
My system uses the Et 200's also. The problem is, that they only interrupt the power to 4 of the 16 outputs at once. If I use the SFC12, I kill all 16. No can do--need the others. I could simply wire and program the Position LS's into the ladder and interrupt the output coils there, but this steps on the Hardwired interlock--which is the crux of the thing here--they wanted a hardwired interlock to the solenoids, and they got one--but their ill concieved method causes a failure indication. I thought that maybe there might be a way to mask, or ignore, the individual faults from any given node of the Profibus, but can't find anything in the books to support anything along that line.
I plan to install a pair of 4 pole relays and interrupt the power to each solenoit at the output end of the module, rather that at the power supply end. I guess I should disconnect them all before I do all the wiring, first, to see if this method causes some kind of "open output device" alarm on the module. If that's a problem, I'll do somethin else. As Senator Howard Baker said once as he sat at the Nixon Watergate hearings " As we say down there in Tennessee, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
On the detached equipment application. We've done a little of that. I have a piece of equipment, a folder/gluer, which utilizes 2 seperate pieces of support equipment, feeders, at different times. Both feeders are controlled by the main machine's PLC. Both feeders have different features with different control schemes and different types of devices that "share" I/O and wiring in/to the main controller. Both feeders connect to the main machine via the same electrical connector plug--one feeder or the other. There is logic to control each feeder in the PLC. The PLC recognizes which code to run via a jumper on each of the feeders connector--it knows which one is plugged in at any give time. If the operator wants to change feeders, he just unplugs, rolls out, rolls in, re-plugs, and the controller takes care of the rest. This system was done in house with AB--not siemens, software--not hardware, well concieved ideas--not "lets make it work and get outta here" attitudes.
