Hi all,
Thanks to everyone's help I am making good progress on the Takisawa turret. I've got all the I-O wired and have a CLICK PLC wired up and communicating with MACH. Also the power side is up and running, the motor relays are happy.... I have a few questions that maybe some folks could help with, any comments would be appreciated :-)
1- I am having trouble with the idea of home switches and separate coordinate systems. This may expose some ignorance on my part, but on my other machines I have no home switches and never change between coordinate systems, just zero the machine on the part and go. Now I want the tool change to take place at the same spot all the time without having to zero off anything but the home switches, I think.... Anybody have a good explanation of this?
2- Another conceptual issue I am having is with communication between Mach and the PLC via VB scripts. What it looks like others have done is write a ladder in the PLC and have Mach write a bit to the PLC to initiate that ladder program. In other words Mach communicates with the PLC with single bits like I-O instead of sending some sort of commands? I've read through a lot of posts on here and that seems like the idea but I wanted to see what folks think before assuming that is how it works.
3-I think I want to avoid Brains for this one, is that a good idea?
4- When setting up the MODBUS, the dialogue box will not go away. If you hit OK it just goes to the bottom left of the screen and stays there? Is this abnormal?
OK, hope that's not too much stuff.... I will post some more images in show and tell one of these days, it is looking good.
Thanks so much,
Dustin