Every plant should have a robust SCADA (supervisory control and data aquisition system) to capture and store data about the manufacturing process to maximize output. The data from the process can be used in a many ways to improve the process and even implement Industry 4.0 features such as machine learning. Here are some
Beckhoff just released the latest version of TwinCAT - 3.1.4024. Typically, a major revision of TwinCAT is released every year. This time however Beckhoff took two years to add some pretty major new features to TwinCAT. This two year schedule will continue to be the trend going forward. After reading through the new features
Not all PLC code is created equal. Too often every bit of code is developed from scratch for a specific machine. Each device on the machine has custom code to control it. Each device on the machine has an custom alarm built and tested specifically for that output. Each device has a custom set of
Maskine recently worked on a project with 100+ Allen-Bradley Kinetix 5700 drives. Over the course of commissioning these drives the same faults came up over and over again. These faults where typically caused by incorrect wiring or configuration. Often the faults displayed in Rockwell Studio5000 can be somewhat cryptic and don't make the problem
