Scenario

My customer, John from Stone Solutions had a machine for cutting stone benchtops. The machine dated back to 1989 and the control was microprocessor based it still had UVEPROM. The main controller had failed completely and he had no control of the machine. The main 30kW drive for the stone cutting disc had also failed a few years back and needed to be replaced. As you can see in the picture the control board was very outdated.

 

John’s specifications were to get the machine working in manual. He wanted control of each axis along with feedback. He also stipulated that in the future he may want to have the option to be able to get the machine to be fully automatic.

To achieve this I needed to install a PLC that would be able to have the capability to be upgraded in future.

Solution

 

I chose to use a Wago TP600 5.7″ Control Panel with remote modbus IO. The reason for this was that the PLC runs on Wago’s e!Cockpit development software which can be upgraded to Codesys and there are readily availably libraries to fully automate the machine at a later stage. The Wago encoder modules can also do TTL and HTL encoders so I knew that I would not need to replace the encoders.

As with any major project a full new set of drawings were compiled to accommodate the new PLC and panel wiring. The drawings were based on the existing system and the numbering was kept the same.

The first stage was to strip out the existing controller and install the new unit. John had supplied me with a checklist of the features he required of the machine. I wrote the software to accommodate all his requests.

Once the job was complete I gave him a few week to run the machine and let me know what features he would like to have changed and added. I came in for a few more hours and updated the software as requested. John was left with a full set of drawings on paper and pdf format as well as a copy of the programme that was in the PLC.

Final Outcome

Should he have any further issues he is free to choose whoever he wants to do more work. I don’t believe in passwords or keeping information away from any customer. I hope that if he uses my services in future it will be because he is happy with my work. Not because I have forced him into using me by password protecting every thing.

 

If you have any machines that need to be upgraded please give me a call on  0451 119 044 and I will be happy to come look at your requests.