We have installed MarkVie control system recently. We have printing problem now. Printer stops printing very often. We have to stop and start the project / HMI to resume printing. do anybody face this problem?

 

This sounds like a warranty issue. You should contact the supplier/packager for assistance.

 

> This sounds like a warranty issue. You should contact the supplier/packager for assistance.

Yes CSA. But our system was installed and commissioned by M/S Hitachi (Gas turbines were supplied vy them) not by GE. Hitachis response to these issues are very poor. Can you advice?

 

There are so many possibilities it's hard to say where to start. GE is now shipping yet <b><i>another</b></i> version of HMI configuration called WorkstationST and within that line of HMIs there are several configurations. But, consistently, none of them is properly documented. So this is kind of like trying to find a constellation in the hour prior to sundown.

You would have to tell us what printer was supplied with the HMI (manufacturer and model number).

Is this printer connected directly to the HMI, or is it a network printer on the PDH?

If the printer is connected directly to the HMI, is it via the parallel LPT1 port or by USB?

How is the printer configured in MS-Windows? From the 'Printers and Faxes' Control Panel applet, describe all the printers that are defined.

If there is a printer in the 'Printers and Faxes' Control Panel applet named 'Alarm Printer' you need to open the Properties for that printer and navigate to the tab which defines the driver being used for the 'Alarm Printer.'

That's about all I can think of to ask. I believe that GE is still NOT using the CIMPLICITY Alarm Manager and -Printer functions, but with all the new configurations that might not be a good presumption. But, we'll try that first.

Oh, one more thing--you should be able to open the GE Control System "folder" in Start | Programs and find something called 'Versions'. That will tell us all the versions of GE applications in use on the HMI. That could also be useful if I need to find an old colleague to see if he can help with this.

Please continue to pursue Hitachi; they supplied the equipment, they should be working to help get it working correctly, and in the process learning how to solve similar problems in the future or even to prevent similar problems in the future.

 

<b>I forgot</b> again <b>to ask:

WHEN DID THIS PROBLEM BEGIN?</b>

Because in your first post you said you had <b>recently</b> "installed" a Mark VIe, and then you said:

>We have printing problem <b>now</b>.

Has the problem existed since commissioning, or did it start some time after commissioning?

How many HMIs do you have, and do all the HMIs have the same problem?

 

CSA,

The printing problem was there during commissioning. Hitachi people tried but did not succeed.

*We have two HMI for MarkVie
*MarkVie version: V03.06.04C
Work station St : same version
Cimplicity: version 6.10 service pack 6
*Printer: OKI ML590
*Printers and Faxes folder: OKI ML 590 connected by LPT1 (Default Alarm Printer)

HP CLJ 4650 through PDH
Alarm (Not used)

I had posted another thread with two other issues:
1-Printer doesn't print the message fully. It gets truncated in the printer.

2-Alarm display in HMI is not fully readable. It goes beyond the right plane.

Please advice.

Thanks

 

If starting and stopping the project fixes the problem, it makes me wonder if your system is configured to do alarm printing from CIMPLICITY instead of using WorkstationST's alarm printing. WorkstationST does a much better job. Using CIMPLICITY's printing may also explain the cut-off text in the printout.

If you open your workstation device in ToolboxST and go to the Alarms tab, select the Alarm Server in the treeview, you should see several options under the Printing category. If Alarm Printing Enabled is false, then CIMPLICITY must be configured to do the printing. (Look in GEH-6706 chapter 3 under "Alarms tab" for configuration options). If WorkstationST is doing the printing, then you'll probably have to work with GE to resolve the issue.

 

Iqbal,

Trying and not succeeding does not bode well for an engineering organization; especially on products that are successfully configured and used every day around the world.

I believe the problem with the printer truncating messages is that the default font was never changed to one that supports the long alarm/event text messages. You will need to use the printer manufacturer's instruction book to determine how to change the default font to one that is at least 12 characters per inch (if I remember correctly) so that it will print approximately 100 characters per line on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet (or an A4 sheet). That should help with that problem. But, this particular problem is most likely with the printer's configuration defaults not being set correctly. They have to be modified to work with the GE HMI properly, and it just sounds like they weren't modified correctly, if at all.

I believe the problem with the alarm window is similar. The font chosen to display the alarm text messages is also too big. Unfortunately, I'm not a CIMPLICITY guru, nor do I have much experience (none really) with WorkstationST and it's Alarm Manager function. But, I have seen this problem on earlier GE HMIs, and that's all it took--re-configuring the default font size used in the Alarm Window object--to fix the problem. I've even heard that sometimes the chosen monitor resolution has an effect on the display, but that's hearsay and I probably shouldn't be repeating it without more information to pass along.

If I recall correctly, the GE "standard" resolution is 1024x768, but I've seen higher resolutions used on some applications. And, you may need to verify that with Hitachi since they probably made a lot of screen changes to accommodate their turbine and it's I/O. In any case, you might even try changing the resolution to 1024x768 if that's not what it's currently set at, or even 1200x 800. Neither of these changes will affect CIMPLICITY or the Mark VIe, so they're worth a try at the very least. (We're talking about video card and monitor resolution here, and these are specific to the PC and the OS, MS-Windows in this case, not to CIMPLICITY or the GE HMI.)

If they are using the "standard" GE configuration, then I believe that in the Printers & Faxes MS-Windows Control Panel applet there needs to be a printer named 'Alarm Printer'. That needs to be set as the 'Default Printer' and it needs to be configured to print to LPT1, and the driver needs to be the driver for the Oki printer you have.

You might try renaming the existing Alarm Printer (you didn't say if one existed or what driver it was using!!!) to "TEST". Then use the 'Add Printer' wizard to add a new printer, and choose the proper Oki printer from the selection, or use the disk provided with the printer (or download the driver from the World Wide Web and put in on a CD/DVD, then copy it to a temporary location, extracted if necessary, on the HMI and browse to that location and select the proper file). Select the LPT1 "port" and let the wizard do it's thing. You should see a new printer with the name of the Oki printer you selected.

Next, right-click on the printer icon and then select 'Rename' and rename the printer to 'Alarm Printer' (without the quotes, but with the capitalization just as noted here).

Then, right-click on the Alarm Printer icon and choose 'Set as Default Printer'.

That <b>should</b> work. As with all things GE HMI-related, there are no guarantees. If it does work, then you could just delete the "TEST" printer since it didn't work anyway.

If this doesn't resolve your problem, I would threaten Hitachi with requesting a GE TA to come to site to fix the problem and then sending the bill to Hitachi, or, withholding an amount equal to the bill from GE from a future payment to Hitcahi. Nothing gets attention like withholding money or back-charging.

But, you should <b>NOT</b> be letting Hitachi off the hook for properly setting up a working alarm printer.

Please write back and let us know how you fared. And, please--provide all the information requested when posting for help here at control.com. The quality of the response, and the speed, depend on it!

 

"Soution for - Alarm display in HMI is not fully readable. It goes beyond the right plane."

please follow the instructions to correct the alarm display message box

1. go to programs -> CIMPLICITY -> hmi -> WORKBENCH

2. in the workbench , go to file -> running project list and select the running project which is having the alarm display problem , it will have a .gef file

ending. if you have more than one .gef file work it out by trial and error with the screens.

3. once this is open go to screens - > alarm.cim -> right click and choose edit
(this alarm.cim is the alarm screen file , you must click on the screens to view all the screens present in your HMI , select the alarms.cim from it)

4. now you will have a edit page with the alarm screen . The alarm is configured as a AVM control object. click on the block which has something like this

Date Time Unit alarm id state acknowledge message

right click on above object and select "CIMPLICITY AMV control object" - > properties

you will have the following tabs (count layout, date format, fronts, storing, fields etc .....) choose fields

there will be a selection called Mode, (static and dynamic) choose dynami . in the window you will see
Date
Time
Resource ID
State
Ack State
Alarm ID
Reference
Message
Etc.....
this actually decides what is necessary in the alarm field , if you think something is unnecessary you can remove it by unchececking the field

click on message -> Modify
you will have two fields
length
title
you will have to change the length to increase the length of the message field.

sometimes it happens that the message is in the rightmost corner and even if you increase the length the length will not increase as the boundary will exceed the limit. in this case you have to change the length of the fields to the left of the message to accommodate the increased message length. or you can change the message field position using "position left" command so as to change the message field to the left.

i think once you reach this , you can intuitively use the modify and the different fields to configure the alarm display as you wish. you can also do away with some fields which you feel is unnecessary. after you do a modification , use the "bulb" button to simulate the change.

have fun .

 

CSA,

I tried renaming and deleting the OKI printer. Also tried pitch 12 instead of 17. Still printer font is big and is not printing full Alarm descriptions.

Changing monitor resolutions doesn't have any effect on the Cimplicity display settings.

Thanks

 

PV,

WOW. That worked.
Great. Thank you very much.

 

Iqbal,

One last question: When you open the Alarm Printer on the HMI and open the Properties tab, you should see a 'Print test page' button near the bottom of the window. What happens when you press that?

The only thing I can suggest is that someone has mucked with the default settings of the OKI printer driver in MS-Windows, and/or that the printer hasn't been properly configured to over-ride the information coming from the HMI.

When properly configured, the printer driver is just sending ASCII characters to the printer, and the printer is using its internal configuration (which has to be manually performed!) to print the information in a "condensed" font in order to make the messages fit on a single line.

I've had to set up hundreds of these printers over the years (beginning with Mark IV control systems) and they're all the same: they have to be manually configured, and that configuration has to be saved to the printer's memory, because all they are doing when printing alarms/events is printing an ASCII character string using the configuration stored in the printer.

I believe that's what happens in the background of a GE HMI when one names a printer 'Alarm Printer'--the GE HMI sends ASCII characters to 'Alarm Printer'. And the physical printer has to be configured to print these streams (usually limited to 80 character per text message--not the entire line length, just the length of the alleged "description" in addition to the time/date, unit number, drop number, etc.).

Granted, printer configuration might not be easy because of the various buttons one has to push that aren't intuitive, but once you've changed the configuration of the printer <b>and saved it permanently to the printer's memory</b> you will find it was indeed, not rocket science.

RTFM: Read the F ... Fine Manual. And be patient with pressing buttons and then once you've saved the configuration, there should also be a method for having the printer display the current configuration to check to be sure that it was properly saved and configured.

I usually set the printer to a "draft" mode, which causes it to print "lightly" and therefore faster (at least it seems faster), with a fixed-pitch font of 17 characters-per-inch. I usually have to do this at the printer (not from the HMI printer properties).

This is made a little more difficult when there are settings to be mucked with in MS-Windows printer drivers, but in my experience the default settings for the MS-Windows OKI printer drivers work just fine <b>once the printer is properly configured.</b>

 

Great , and yes thanks for the feedback always glad to help out.

 

There's one more important piece of information that I just remembered; sorry. (It's been a long time since I've configured a printer, because they are usually pre-configured by the vendor who supplies them to GE as it's part of the ordering drawing/specification. This was because there was so many problems with people configuring the printers in the field when GE stopped configuring the printers in the factory before they shipped them.)

The printer needs to be configured to be in a very generic "compatibility" mode. The two modes that GE used in the various printers are IBM Proprinter and Epson LQ, which are very generic dot matrix printer set-ups.

So, when configuring the printer please be sure to select one or the other for "Compatibility Mode" or some similar setting.