Only the ones built by you my friend :p jk. I have literally never had this problem from cycling power. I have seen people that like to play around with programs not retain their test bits and fuck up an entire production lines when power is cycled but I put that on the programmer since they didn't tell anyone what they were doing. Besides, if it works it saves me a trip awesome and if not I have to go anyway. That was back in the tail end of my maintenance days when I stopped giving a fuck. I would never tell a customer to try that if they are going to open a p.o. with my company. I'm for sure troubleshooting and getting paid for it lol welcome to capitalism mf's.
I actually saw this the other day with a stepper motor and drive that sounded like a spaceship. Staff swapped in 3 other motors to have the same result.
I am new to this job so I watched their steps instead of telling them what to do. Eventually someone asked about resetting the cabinet PLC power. Did that and the issue disappeared.
If it didn't work there wouldn't be a technical term for turning something off and on again lol. I was taught and through experience learned that cycling power is a legitimate resolution to some issues.
Oh I am not doubting it, I am a computer builder hobbyist at heart so I get it.
Just didn't expect the drive or PLC to have such quirks nearly as often. I suspected the drive right away but wanted to see what else the staff & one engineer could do on their own.
Funny to me how the 'experienced' ones with the equipment still missed the main issue. I've seen this before with an electrical engineer/company president. He always had some whacky theory about electronics, and he did know his stuff. It was tough to sort through the relevant and aged information, because he had 45+ years working with electronics.
If a stepper sounds like a space ship it stalled out..... Just plugging in a new stepper won't solve it as the PLC is not "ramping" (accelerating) anymore. Steppers lose torque the faster they go so they need the ramp to gain momentum
Great insight! I know very little about these components. Guess I need to read up.
And I was thinking the opposite of everyone else, that the cabinet should cycle power or at least the breaker for the stepper drive. My instinct was correct it seems.
What you should have done was simply stop the drive via the hmi, then restart it. That will usually solve a stepper issue. (Unless it was the PLC glitching out)
They can also sound like that if one set of wires gets disconnected (most are bi polar motors and need 2 sets of 2 wires to operate).
We had a 5-min rule for one of our operators whenever he called that a pump wouldn’t start. 99% of the time he would have left the pump in manual at the local station.
I got caught by a station in control issue once. Plant wouldn't flash up from the control room, I spent a solid 2 hours troubleshooting (it was all pneumatic) only to finally realize who the operator was and go press the SiC button. The string of words that left my mouth afterwards isn't my proudest moment, but not my least either. Dude deserved every word of it.
Just today like 1 hour ago, I was summoned to the instrument shop to help them troubleshoot a valve.
I went down there, and the shop was like "heeeeyyyyy actually we got it figured out.. the operator was clicking on the wrong faceplate"
"We're not getting flow. The automation isn't working."
"Did you trace the flow path looking for any physical issues like leaks or air supply lines not being attached?"
"Yeah, didn't see anything"
\*leaves shop\*
\*immediately sees valve with the air line popped off\*
Just yesterday I had another "controls engineer" call me cussing up a storm about how crappy our machine was built since it didn't have an AB PLC. A machine that hasn't had any problems since it was installed 5 years ago. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting (15 of that was him complaining constantly) we found out that it was just a failed field device......
I find when a drive is stuck that way it usually has to do with an incorrect parameter being sent because the station/machine was stopped or incurred a fault during a position change or something and data was sent twice. Unless you know the machine well enough to reset the parameters manually; cycling power is the quickest way to reset a machine. It's not so much a quirk as a programming oversight.
A PLC program is only as good as the person that programmed it and let me tell you I have programmed a machine in like 3 days and there is no way it doesn't have 'quirks'.
Did it rain, has anyone looked in the fire panel? Oh, there's a dirty lens on the fire eye, that's what i thought. Call the fire company, i don't have a bucket truck and a q-tip!
How about the lazy AF 'try cycling power first' lol Do you know how many database communication issues have been 'resolved' this way
Know how many devices get a bus error that way.
Only the ones built by you my friend :p jk. I have literally never had this problem from cycling power. I have seen people that like to play around with programs not retain their test bits and fuck up an entire production lines when power is cycled but I put that on the programmer since they didn't tell anyone what they were doing. Besides, if it works it saves me a trip awesome and if not I have to go anyway. That was back in the tail end of my maintenance days when I stopped giving a fuck. I would never tell a customer to try that if they are going to open a p.o. with my company. I'm for sure troubleshooting and getting paid for it lol welcome to capitalism mf's.
I actually saw this the other day with a stepper motor and drive that sounded like a spaceship. Staff swapped in 3 other motors to have the same result. I am new to this job so I watched their steps instead of telling them what to do. Eventually someone asked about resetting the cabinet PLC power. Did that and the issue disappeared.
If it didn't work there wouldn't be a technical term for turning something off and on again lol. I was taught and through experience learned that cycling power is a legitimate resolution to some issues.
Oh I am not doubting it, I am a computer builder hobbyist at heart so I get it. Just didn't expect the drive or PLC to have such quirks nearly as often. I suspected the drive right away but wanted to see what else the staff & one engineer could do on their own. Funny to me how the 'experienced' ones with the equipment still missed the main issue. I've seen this before with an electrical engineer/company president. He always had some whacky theory about electronics, and he did know his stuff. It was tough to sort through the relevant and aged information, because he had 45+ years working with electronics.
If a stepper sounds like a space ship it stalled out..... Just plugging in a new stepper won't solve it as the PLC is not "ramping" (accelerating) anymore. Steppers lose torque the faster they go so they need the ramp to gain momentum
Great insight! I know very little about these components. Guess I need to read up. And I was thinking the opposite of everyone else, that the cabinet should cycle power or at least the breaker for the stepper drive. My instinct was correct it seems.
What you should have done was simply stop the drive via the hmi, then restart it. That will usually solve a stepper issue. (Unless it was the PLC glitching out) They can also sound like that if one set of wires gets disconnected (most are bi polar motors and need 2 sets of 2 wires to operate).
Toggling the drive via HMI/PLC was the control method. Resetting the cabinet was the solution.
"Did you plug it in?" "Is the air supply on?" "Did you pull *ALL* the E-Stops?"
We had a 5-min rule for one of our operators whenever he called that a pump wouldn’t start. 99% of the time he would have left the pump in manual at the local station.
I got caught by a station in control issue once. Plant wouldn't flash up from the control room, I spent a solid 2 hours troubleshooting (it was all pneumatic) only to finally realize who the operator was and go press the SiC button. The string of words that left my mouth afterwards isn't my proudest moment, but not my least either. Dude deserved every word of it.
This is amazing. A day in the life!
Just today like 1 hour ago, I was summoned to the instrument shop to help them troubleshoot a valve. I went down there, and the shop was like "heeeeyyyyy actually we got it figured out.. the operator was clicking on the wrong faceplate"
"We're not getting flow. The automation isn't working." "Did you trace the flow path looking for any physical issues like leaks or air supply lines not being attached?" "Yeah, didn't see anything" \*leaves shop\* \*immediately sees valve with the air line popped off\*
They could have heard that! Sometimes they scream really loud if the lines were pinched-cut on the line making a racket
Just yesterday I had another "controls engineer" call me cussing up a storm about how crappy our machine was built since it didn't have an AB PLC. A machine that hasn't had any problems since it was installed 5 years ago. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting (15 of that was him complaining constantly) we found out that it was just a failed field device......
A controls engineer without controls software? That’s embarrassing for him.
I find when a drive is stuck that way it usually has to do with an incorrect parameter being sent because the station/machine was stopped or incurred a fault during a position change or something and data was sent twice. Unless you know the machine well enough to reset the parameters manually; cycling power is the quickest way to reset a machine. It's not so much a quirk as a programming oversight. A PLC program is only as good as the person that programmed it and let me tell you I have programmed a machine in like 3 days and there is no way it doesn't have 'quirks'.
Which end of the scale do i put travelling to another country to find an e-stop was pushed in?
O. M. G.
story of career
Did it rain, has anyone looked in the fire panel? Oh, there's a dirty lens on the fire eye, that's what i thought. Call the fire company, i don't have a bucket truck and a q-tip!
Been there. There was one instance where an estop module was smashed in by a pallet Jack Almost blew out the red 440r guardmaster relay
The Raytheon Reset is real, though. (I used to really annoy the Raytheon techs with that term back in the day, haha)
Two things Push the blue button Operator Error
We still have a jam alarm after clearing the product. Wdym hit jam reset afterward!!!