Comments for Contact and Coil

Comment on Automation and Software in the Next Decade by Scott Whitlock

Scott Whitlock — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 09:42:26 +0000

@Jeff: That’s a really interesting video! How ironic is it that the strongest advocates of strong copyright are themselves taking advantage of weak copyright?

Comment on Automation and Software in the Next Decade by Jeff Mair

Jeff Mair — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:06:27 +0000

Here’s a good example of a music sample that slipped through the copyright cracks to go on to provide substantial influence for many years…. I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like without such stringent copyright laws.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Comment on Beckhoff TwinCAT: a First Impression by Scott Whitlock

Scott Whitlock — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:06:28 +0000

@Angel: Great! We’re interested in using some IP67 stuff from Beckhoff, so I’d definitely be interested in hearing your experiences.

Comment on Beckhoff TwinCAT: a First Impression by Angel

Angel — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:09:29 +0000

Hi Scott
First of all, thanks for the article, I think it’s great. I’m in Orkney (Scotland) and just starting with Beckhoff’s stuff comming from Siemens PLC. So far my feelings are quite good in terms of performance and prices. Our application is a tidal turbine and for this reason we are using the IP67 I/O modules. Once I finish my test bench assembly and done the first tests I’ll share with you guys all my experiences. Cheers

Comment on SoapBox Snap: Sneak Peek by Scott Whitlock

Scott Whitlock — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:37:26 +0000

@Rob: Thanks for the enthusiasm. I’m still getting time to work on it almost every day. It’s coming along, and I’ve got a slowly declining list of punchlist items. It’ll get there. Please be patient.

Comment on SoapBox Snap: Sneak Peek by Rob Phillips

Rob Phillips — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:21:48 +0000

Please let me know when this framework will be available for download. I have recently been looking into building my own ladder logic GUI for some personal projects. It appears to me that you have done a lot of the wheel making on this, so no need to reinvent! I cannot wait to see what you have put together.

Comment on The “Almost There” Paradox by Scott Whitlock

Scott Whitlock — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:23:04 +0000

Good point Ken. It makes you wonder how NASA manages to land *any* landers on Mars… it’s not like you can try that too many times.

Comment on The “Almost There” Paradox by Jeff M

Jeff M — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:15:15 +0000

Very good point Scott. I’m a regular victim (or perpetrator?) of this scenario (though not related to industrial automation per se). I find that this happens often due to feeling too pressed for time/budget to go back and re-think the solution. It can be hard to justify to the people in charge that we need time to ‘re-think’ a little. They would usually prefer to just squeeze a little more juice out of the lemon.

Comment on The “Almost There” Paradox by Ken McLaughlin

Ken McLaughlin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:01:11 +0000

I agree 100%.

It’s really easy to make something work 50 or 100 times in the lab, but what does that equate to in real production time? Running 2000 twinkies through a prototype in a lab may sound like a lot, but if the line rate is 200 twinkies per minute, it’s only 10 minutes worth of production. To get a 1-shift equivalent for a week you need to run 96000… …not practical in a lab to do.

To get real OEE and performance you need to run real significant numbers to get real data.

Comment on Reading the ControlLogix System Time in Ladder Logic by Scott Whitlock

Scott Whitlock — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:17:37 +0000

@Steve, unfortunately I don’t have a running ControlLogix around here right now, so I can’t go online and verify it. But the steps are straightforward: create the UDT as shown above, create one (controller scrope) tag called LocalDateTime of type TIME, and then enter the GSV instruction shown above. However, you’ll need some logic to fire it. I believe it’s an asynchronous instruction, so a one-shot may not work. Check the F1 help docs to be sure.