Productivity Series PLCs Motion Control - Setup High Speed Output Module from AutomationDirect

We will be using the HSO module on a Productivity 2000 to control the carriage motion on this linear slide in our demos. Before we can do any of that though, we need to configure the HSO module, so we’ll do that in this video and then show how to use all the ladder logic motion commands in separate videos. Under hardware configuration, AutoDetect all the hardware. Look s like we have a Productivity 2000 550 controller and two High speed output – or HSO - modules in this base. Now just double click on an HSO Module to configure it. We have three tabs, one for module level stuff and one for each of the two High Speed output channels. Under Module Setup we can give the module a name. This option automatically detects and verifies the module and if someone yanks the module out while it is running it will generate an error and switch the CPU to STOP mode. If you want to be able to hot swap an HSO module and not generate and error and not shut down the CPU, then select this option. We’re going to use two of the HSO inputs for button presses, so let’s give those names. And we’ll use two more for proximity sensors that we’ll sue for limit switches. We don’t need any outputs for our demo, but this is where you would assign them if you did. We do want to be able to read module status so let’s assign tags to those. Now when we try to go to the Channel 1 setup The Productivity Suite Software reminds us we need to define all those new tags – this looks good so I’ll hit OK. I really love that the software does all of that work for me … Let’s give the channel a name. Now this is my favorite part of the HSO configuration – Instead of dealing with pulses for everything, I can select inches and tell the HSO how many pulses we need for one inch of travel. One rotation of the screw on the linear slide we are using moves the carriage .5 inches. And I have already preset the drive to generate 2000 pulses per rotation, so I know it takes 4000 pulses to move one inch. Well, look … everything in the entire project is now in inches! I never have to use pulses again when using channel 1 on this HSO module. Sure! This automatic scaling makes your programming life so much easier. You can also use these other standard units or if you don’t like any of those, create your own. It’s very flexible. I do want to be able to specify fractional inches so let’s select this option. I see that the system will limit me to plus or minus about 2000 inches of travel – that’s way more than the 24 inches we need so we’re in great shape. We will want a little more accuracy than this so let’s change that. You can specify the time units you want to see. Seconds works fine for us. Maybe you need revolutions per minute. Again, the beauty of scaling is it puts everything in real physical units you can understand which as you will see in the other videos, makes your programming life much easier. We do want to be able to monitor the real time position, velocity and status. We’ll be using Pulse and direction and you can even specify a delay between direction changes. For us, increasing pulse count will be the positive direction, but if we need to flip it we could just check this one. This backlash compensation issues this number of pulses at this rate on a direction change. This is for when you know you need extra pulses to account for the slop in your lead screw when changing direction. These extra pulses do NOT affect the real time position status. The starting velocity allows you to you to expedite accelerations. Instead of accelerating from the current velocity, the velocity will jump by this amount then start accelerating. Make sure your system can handle that size jump if you use this. We want to accelerate from the current velocity so we’ll leave this at zero. You will normally want to set this to the maximum velocity your system can handle. In our demo this linear slide can do up to 15 inches per second, so we put a 15 here. Again, notice I don’t have to figure out how many pulses that is – the software automatically does that for me because of that scaling we setup earlier. I want to be able to get to that maximum velocity in half a second, so I’ll double that number and put a 30 here and also for deceleration. For all of these, if I specify a velocity or acceleration that is out of bounds I want to know about it so I’ll leave this at stop move. You could have the software automatically limit you to the max, but then you don’t know if you coded something wrong. We’re using a linear slide in our demo so we don’t need to worry about rollover, but if you have a rotary device you might want to use this so your position automatically rolls over to zero at whatever position you put here. We’re using proximity sensors on this slide so we can detect end of travel, and we put those on inputs 5 and 6. They present them selves as normally open contacts so we’ll leave that set like this. You can also use position limits. We don’t really need those because we have the proximity sensors, but I’m going to specify them anyway so we can use them in our demo. The cool thing we’ll show you is you can modify these on the fly while your program is running. That’s what this double arrow means. So instead of putting an absolute number in here, we’ll use a Tag so we can modify it in our ladder code later. Channel 2 is the exact same thing – we’ll leave that empty for now. Just remember that it is completely independent from channel 1 – it can have its own units, it’s own custom setup etc. Nothing about Channel 1’s configuration affects the operation of channel 2. And vice-versa They are completely independent – which is another awesome feature of the Productivity series high speed output module. As always, make sure you are using the most recent version of the software and firmware in all of the modules. You can down load the most recent Productivity Suite software for free right here and the firmware for all the modules is here in this all in one file. To update the firmware in the modules, just go to Check and Upgrade firmware, browse to the firmware file you just downloaded and you instantly see a list of all modules that are upgradable. Highlight any module or modules you wish to upgrade and click ‘Upgrade’. Easy. If you need any help, please contact AutomationDirect’s free award winning tech support team during regular business hours – they will be happy to help. And don’t forget the forums – there are lots of folks there that love to share their years of experience. Just don’t post any questions directed at AutomationDirect’s support staff there, they don’t monitor the forums on a regular basis.