Hi,
I am in the process of rebuilding and retrofitting an old ran down and broken machine.

The old relay logic and gear-train will be replaced with AB ControlLogix and a Kinetix 300 and a PanelViewPlus. These components will be Ethernet connected. Still working on the mechanicals and the wiring. I have some experience with Ultra 5000 drive programming in c, but I am totally new to program motion in ladder on a CompactLogix for Kinetix. I have RSLogix 5000 mini edition to do the job. I've already downloaded and installed the add-on modules for Kinetix 300. I was gonna looking up some motion ladder samples for Kinetix, to run on CompactLogix. I was surprised (not really) to figure it out, I've got nothing related.

I am not asking any one to do my job, but if some of you came across something, or have done it, I would really appreciate a sample of logic. Something like the c source code comes with the Ultra 5000 drives. The machine is quiet far away from being able to power up yet, but, just out of curiosity I started a little off-line programming for the motion, and I can see that, it will not be a smooth ride.

Thanx,
Rob

 

Any one?

 

CLX was pitched as a general-purpose platform that specialized in motion. Maybe I didn't do involved enough stuff to see the benefit, but I never found anything you could do with it you couldn't do in a SLC with a servo card.

I didn't get a tingle running up my leg that the NAMES of the motion instructions were motion-specific (MAM, MAS, MAH, and so on as opposed to just MOVing some data to an address in the servo card's image).

One thing I found was that I ended up doing everything with MAM's (and MAS's of course), rather than using the MAJ's to jog, MAH's to home and so on. The specialized instructions always seemed to have some annoying limitation and to work around it you ended up rolling your own using a MAM. (Admittedly this information is pretty old -- I haven't done any motion on a CLX/CPLX in a couple years. They may have got better.)

 

I have found motion on a CLX platform to be pretty straightforward. There are bunches of quirks, but there are bunches of quirks in every AB motion product. In fact, there are the same kinds of quirks in every motion product i have used, and there are at least a dozen brands on that list by now.

For single axis control, you are probably correct that the SLC servo card works about as well.

--
Bob

 

Sorry, I'm a bit over-worked at the moment and don't have time to track it down. I know for a fact they have the sample code, because I was at a Hands On Lab that did it. You should be able to get a copy of the Hands On Lab manual and code, through your distributor if not directly off the website. I also think there's a manual with examples, but what exactly that manual is called I'm not sure. Sometimes all the motion stuff is grouped in together, sometimes not. Often you want a software manual and you get a hardware manual. Again, your distributor should be able to help find this. You might also ask for a copy of the Motion Accelerator Toolkit while you're at it.

Hope that helps,
James Ingraham
Sage Automation, Inc.

 

Thanks for the responses. It re-affirms my very preliminary impression, there is nothing really outstanding of this CLX Kinetix integrated motion. The price would suggest it otherwise.

Anyways, I'll do a little experiment with it, and get it done.

 

> For single axis control, you are probably correct that the SLC servo card works about as well.

I was wondering if that might be the issue. I wasn't doing any camming or multi-axis path control, and didn't see any advantage. Just simple S-Curve moves on one axis at a time per system on three independent two-axis systems. Is that where you'd say the CLX outperforms a SLC or PLC?

It also annoyed me that since CLX had an obvious object-orientation paradigm and was supposedly specialized in motion, that you couldn't embed an AXIS in a UDT, nor create an array of them. I could have written much cleaner code if you could have.

 

I think you can now use Axis types in UDT. You still can't put motion instructions inside user defined functions though.

 

> I think you can now use Axis types in UDT. You still can't put motion
> instructions inside user defined functions though.

That's good news! I think I had heard that as well. While it WOULD be nice to have the option to put motion instructions inside AOI's, I think putting AXIS's in UDT's (and arrays, to a lesser extent) is far more critical and fundamental.