JimSchafer
Member
Greetings,
I own and operate a small textile mill and suffer from the constant desire to improve things. The machines we use are made partially from parts of old, much larger machines which were made anywhere from the 1940's to the 1970's. These machines were all gear driven with a single motor.
My machines are mini versions of their older parents but much smaller. For instance, my spinning frame has 8 spindles compared to possibly hundreds of spindles on the original machine. The root problem I have is the new mini version of these machines no longer use a single motor and gears that can be changed to adjust the ratios of the various rollers on the machine.
Instead we have multiple motors and VSD's to control their speed. In theory this works, but after adjusting the frequency, acceleration and deceleration times on a simple operator panel (Hitachi NE-s1) it becomes quite painful to setup a job to say the least.
It seems a PLC would be able to do this little task quite nicely. If I were smart, I'd hire a guru like one of you guys here on this forum. But this stuff is so cool and powerful, I would like to try to do it myself and learn.
I have ordered a Click PLC, a touch screen, a Hitachi Ne-s1, and a small 3 ph motor. I have also picked up a handful of various sensors, relays, indicators, switches etc. play with. So far things are going well. I can successfully make the PLC and the touch screen work together. Using Modbus, I can get the PLC to tell the Hitachi drive to change frequency and deceleration time. What I can't seem to accomplish is to get the plc to tell the drive to start.
I have configured the drive parameters that the Mitsubishi manual (if you can call it a manual) says are requirements for Modbus Communication. Since I can successfully change register values in the drive from the plc I can assume that my physical setup is correct.
I'm sure I am missing something because of my lack of experience but I don't know where to start digging. So I'm hoping someone will take pity on me and offer a few suggestions
Thank you,
Jim
I own and operate a small textile mill and suffer from the constant desire to improve things. The machines we use are made partially from parts of old, much larger machines which were made anywhere from the 1940's to the 1970's. These machines were all gear driven with a single motor.
My machines are mini versions of their older parents but much smaller. For instance, my spinning frame has 8 spindles compared to possibly hundreds of spindles on the original machine. The root problem I have is the new mini version of these machines no longer use a single motor and gears that can be changed to adjust the ratios of the various rollers on the machine.
Instead we have multiple motors and VSD's to control their speed. In theory this works, but after adjusting the frequency, acceleration and deceleration times on a simple operator panel (Hitachi NE-s1) it becomes quite painful to setup a job to say the least.
It seems a PLC would be able to do this little task quite nicely. If I were smart, I'd hire a guru like one of you guys here on this forum. But this stuff is so cool and powerful, I would like to try to do it myself and learn.
I have ordered a Click PLC, a touch screen, a Hitachi Ne-s1, and a small 3 ph motor. I have also picked up a handful of various sensors, relays, indicators, switches etc. play with. So far things are going well. I can successfully make the PLC and the touch screen work together. Using Modbus, I can get the PLC to tell the Hitachi drive to change frequency and deceleration time. What I can't seem to accomplish is to get the plc to tell the drive to start.
I have configured the drive parameters that the Mitsubishi manual (if you can call it a manual) says are requirements for Modbus Communication. Since I can successfully change register values in the drive from the plc I can assume that my physical setup is correct.
I'm sure I am missing something because of my lack of experience but I don't know where to start digging. So I'm hoping someone will take pity on me and offer a few suggestions
Thank you,
Jim
