ACC Automation: PLC & Industrial Control Learning
Practical Tips and Techniques
We will now look at another way of programming our palletizer using the PLC. How many ways can you program the PLC for the same function? The answer is a lot of different ways. You can have ten different programmers working on the same program and get ten different automatic control PLC programs. Sure they … Read more
Math instructions are used to perform mathematical calculations. The BRX Do-More PLC has math instructions that can be used in a wide variety of applications. We will be looking at the INC increment, DEC decrement, LERP linear Interpolation, RANDSEED Random Number Seed, and the MATH Calculated Expression instructions. The automation system that you implement may … Read more
Compare instruction is often used in PLC programs to test pairs of values. The output of this comparison conditions the logical continuity of a rung. The BRX Do-More series of programmable logic controllers have the following compare contact instructions. = (if Equal contact) <> (if Not Equal contact) > (if Greater Than contact) >= (if … Read more
We will use the PLC to sort items on a conveyor operating shift register instructions. We will apply the five steps to a PLC example program development of a sorting station. The program will use shift registers to track colored parts down a conveyor and sort, depending on color, into one of three locations. Developing … Read more
The BRX Do-More series of programmable logic controllers has built in high speed inputs and outputs. Every CPU will have either 6 or 10 high speed inputs (HSI) available depending on the model. These inputs can be used for input frequencies from 0 to 250Khz. 250Khz represents 250000 input counts per second that can be … Read more
A majority of the programmable logic controller (PLC) programs will include a counter instruction. The BRX Do-More series of programmable logic controllers have several different counters available for your program. There are five different basic counter instructions in the PLC. The memory area for counters (CT) includes the Counter PVs (Present Values) Counter SVs (Set … Read more
We will apply the five steps to PLC program development to a pick and place robot example. The example will use a BRX PLC communicating to Factory IO (3D Software Simulator). Developing the PLC program is a process that can be clearly defined. In our series on the five steps to PLC program development, we … Read more
We will now look at writing our first program for the BRX Do-More PLC. The Do-More Series allows us to write programs online or offline with the PLC controller. The series will also allow us to do online editing. We can change program information and download the new program between scans of our controller. As … Read more
We will look at numbering systems in our BRX Do-More controller. This will include physical IO, casting, and indirect addressing. The BRX Do-More PLC like all of the PLCs in the Do-More Series use strong data typing. This means that there are fixed memory structures to work within your program. Errors will be displayed if … Read more
Previously we used VB6 (Visual Basic 6) to implement the Omron Host Link Protocol to communicate to our programmable logic controller. (PLC) In part 2 we used Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to accomplish our host link serial communication. We will now look at using VB.Net to establish and retrieve information in and out of … Read more