Every PLC and HMI tutorial on plctr.com: project setup, ladder and structured text, communication, troubleshooting and commissioning, written from the plant floor.
The guard on the case packer came off its 440R-S12R2 on a Saturday and went onto a 1791ES-IB8XOBV4 under a GuardLogix 5580, same tongue switch, same two 100S-C09 contactors, and the first time the door was closed the DCS instruction reported Fault Code 16#4000 and would not take a reset. Channel A active, channel B … Read more
Zone 5 is stopped, PE5 is clear, Zone[5].Expecting is 0, and there is a 600 mm carton standing 30 mm short of the beam that no zone on the line is driving. Zone 4 behind it has a carton on its eye, Owns clear, its hold timer done, and every permissive it needs to release … Read more
The infeed conveyor’s GuardLogix 5580 consumes one safety tag from the case packer’s 5580, CP_Safe, and at 02:04 every night for a week CP_Safe.ConnStatus.ConnectionFaulted went to 1 for between two and nine seconds, the consumed data went to zero, the conveyor’s CROUT dropped its contactors, and the shift lead reset it and wrote “network” on … Read more
The E-stop is reset, the safety relay is closed, every one of the twelve PowerFlex 525s on the accumulation line has S1 and S2 at 24 V again and F059 cleared from its display, and nothing moves. No fault on any drive, no alarm on the HMI, twelve zones with a carton on every eye … Read more
The warehouse system’s report for the night shift said 4,629 cartons sorted, 100% to the lane the order wanted, and the lane 2 pallet had 19 cartons on it that belonged in lane 3 and a picker who found them at 06:40. The sorter had no way to know. Its scanner read the label, its … Read more
Zone 6’s eye came out of stores as a 42EF-P2KBB-F4, went onto the bracket in place of a 42EF-P2JBB-F4, and from the next 600 mm carton on, zone 6 reported occupied while it was empty and empty while a carton stood on it. One letter in the fifth position of the catalogue number, K for … Read more
The takeaway conveyor’s 25B-D010N104, a 480 V PowerFlex 525 on a 4 kW motor, ran all day and tripped F005 OverVoltage on the first stop of every shift, with the PowerFlex 525 decel time at 2.00 s, b005 [DC Bus Voltage] sitting at 812 V in the fault history, and a belt carrying forty cartons … Read more
A first SCL block is two statements long – FC10, for a CPU 1516-3 PN/DP – and the first compile of it comes back with four errors and a warning. Every one of them is a ladder habit typed into a language that reads like Pascal, and the compiler is describing each habit accurately, in … Read more
A CPU 315-2 PN/DP with 6ES7315-2EH14-0AB0 on the label maps to a CPU 1515-2 PN, 6ES7515-2AM01-0AB0, in the Siemens migration guide’s CPU table, and the S7-1500 migration does not happen in one move. It happens in two, the second of which is a right-click on the old CPU in the device view called Migrate to … Read more
A CU240E-2 PN sits on the PROFINET IO system of a CPU 1516-3 PN/DP with G120 telegram 1 in its device view, the PLC is writing 16#047F to the control word and 8192 to the setpoint, and the motor does not move. Bit 6 of the status word is set. That bit is “switching on … Read more
Step 2 of a two-step TIA Portal GRAPH sequencer on a CPU 1515-2 PN has been active for 4 minutes 12 seconds by its own S2.T, the transition below it has been satisfied for the last 40 of those seconds, and the sequencer is still sitting on step 2. The heater that step 2 drives … Read more
Zone 3 of the takeaway conveyor stops about once a shift with “Zone3”.Fault latched, the photo-eye on %I4.3 reads a steady 1 in every watch table anybody has opened, and the CPU 1516-3 PN/DP is turning OB1 over in about 6 ms. Whatever is happening is happening inside one of those 6 ms passes, hours … Read more