By Clarence Klassen
The first two parts of this three-part blog were published on March 30 and April 6.
The web-handling line and its control cabinets are complete in the shop. It’s time to start testing the drive communication between the PLC, its remote I/O, and the drives used on the line.
The remote I/O went fairly smoothly. The IP address had to be set up and correlated with the MAC id on each communications module. Then the communications had to be told how many I/O modules were associated with that rack. With one rack, the communications showed a flashing error light. This was the rack with the most I/O. Finally, in desperation, I started establishing communications for one module at a time. IN the end, all the modules were installed and working. Loose connection?
One Ethernet cable needed its connector re-crimped.
Preparation and testing with a demo drive and drive communications worked as soon as all cables were plugged into the correct Ethernet switches.
On the first operation, we had a few strange drive responses, such as noisy feedback signals, drives failing to run at high speed, and poor torque control. Turned out these problems were related to drive setup, not communications.
A full day used in setting up all communications for drives, PLC, and operator interfaces.