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First off, I'm a senior MechE and am taking a summer controls/vib lab. (11 credits remaining for next semester). Also, I'm a complete noob to PLCs.
We're required to design a lab that may be used in the future. I felt that the current curriculum lacks education in PLC/HMI development, so I was trying to design a lab that could serve as an intro to PLC programming.
My idea was to use a PLC to control a CPM machine. Here is a video of what it does...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSEOKJqp5Kg.
From what I've seen it functions by using a DC motor to spin gears, and gets feedback from a pot in the joint that indicates the angle of the machine. Once it reaches a user entered bound, the motor reverses direction and it continues in this manner until it is stopped.
Since I'm so new to this, I'm really just looking to start and stop the motor and have the user control the bounds of the machine 0 to 60 0 to 25 0 to 90 etc. If it would be easier, it could jus have settings for every 40 degrees or so up to 120, rather than go by 1 degree increments.
Since i don't actually need to build/develop this, I just need to know how it could be done using a PLC. What model PLC and software would be simple/cheap to use? Basically, how would I set something like this up?
We're required to design a lab that may be used in the future. I felt that the current curriculum lacks education in PLC/HMI development, so I was trying to design a lab that could serve as an intro to PLC programming.
My idea was to use a PLC to control a CPM machine. Here is a video of what it does...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSEOKJqp5Kg.
From what I've seen it functions by using a DC motor to spin gears, and gets feedback from a pot in the joint that indicates the angle of the machine. Once it reaches a user entered bound, the motor reverses direction and it continues in this manner until it is stopped.
Since I'm so new to this, I'm really just looking to start and stop the motor and have the user control the bounds of the machine 0 to 60 0 to 25 0 to 90 etc. If it would be easier, it could jus have settings for every 40 degrees or so up to 120, rather than go by 1 degree increments.
Since i don't actually need to build/develop this, I just need to know how it could be done using a PLC. What model PLC and software would be simple/cheap to use? Basically, how would I set something like this up?
