This is our new labeller. Beckhoff C6030 IPC, TwinCAT 3.1 4024, 30 EtherCAT slaves, six AX5000 axes and the rest EL terminals. Our commissioning engineer put the EtherCAT and NC task at 250 us because the master offered it and the axes looked smoother on the bench.
At the customer the machine jitters, and it's worse when the HMI is busy. The NC task Exceed counter climbs a few hundred an hour and the axes pick up a small position lag that the customer can see on the label.
I've tried 500 us, less jitter but it still exceeds, so no luck there, and we turned off the Windows update service and the antivirus IT had put on. The vendor reckons we need a faster IPC, the customer reckons he wants a smaller invoice. Do we really need one, or was a 250 us task on 30 slaves never going to hold on this IPC anyway?
What does the motion actually need? On Kinetix I run most packaging axes at 2 ms coarse update and nobody can tell. What's the fastest thing on that labeller, a registration mark, and what's its tolerance? 250 us is a number the tool offered you, not a number the label asked for.
> what is its tolerance
Registration on the label is 0.2 mm at 60 m removed link The marks come in on an EL1252 timestamped input, so I'm not sure the cycle matters much for that part. The cam follower on the applicator is the tightest thing we've got. And honestly, 250 us came straight off the drop down.
Then start at 1 ms and prove it needs less. At 250 us with 30 slaves you're spending a fair chunk of the cycle just getting the frame on the wire, plus the NC calculations, plus whatever Windows helps itself to on a shared core. Two things to read before you touch anything. Real-Time tab, Settings, is the TwinCAT core isolated or shared with Windows? Shared is the default. And on the EtherCAT master, Online, the frame time. Post both.