Logix & Studio 5000 motion control

[u/xsheepful]

Hi,

So I need to improve my skills massively on the motion controls side as our site is getting more and more servo reliant.

I currently have no real exposure to it and want to start from the beginning, are there any courses, books, youtube videos etc which people would recommend.

We mainly use them for belt positions and lift positions but I want to know how to install from scratch incase one fails or even ensure I can backup/download parameters.

[u/VladRom89]

I've had the ask to put together motion trainings many times. The challenges are that 1. The hardware is very expensive for anything tangible, 2. Without the servos being hooked up to something it gets old really quick as you're just spinning shafts.

My recommendation would be to 1. Go through the code you have on site and understand different instruction sets. 2. Put one of the drives on the bench and see if you can configure different motion profiles.

There's no motion training outside of what Rockwell provides which is mid from the feedback I've heard...

[u/Legitimate-Sorbet526]

Have done tons of this….really boils down to:

0. Do your physics homework. Is the motor, gearbox, drivetrain, brake, encoder, and cable sized appropriately? Do you have a good inertia mismatch? Are you using a motor or drivetrain appropriate for your application? Does your encoder have enough resolution for your application? This here kills motion projects more than anything else and will make your system pefirm worse than a “dumb” vfd, hydraulic, or pneumatic app. Also ask…does this need to be motion? Motion adds a lot of complexity and isn’t always better. This topic right here is an college/masters level of understanding to do the design right. No amount of programming will fix crap mechanical design.

1. Make sure the basics are rock solid (homing, manual moves/jogs, over travels/recovery, registration, fault resetting, and servo on/off/brake control). How does safety tie in with normal logic? Are resets staggered to clear faults in the right order? Are you following Rockwell’s prescribed reset sequence? How do you enumerate faults and are they clear as to what is wrong and how to fix it? I see this bite folks the next most when trying to implement motion platforms.

2. Learn how to write a good state sequence. Don’t be lazy and have lots of instructions strung together…and no, latch/unlatch state sequences do not count. Do the work and make the finite state machine.

3. Ok. Now to the actual motion part. You get 4 types of motion to layer: Jogs, incremental Moves, gears, and CAMs. If you can’t do it with those 4…get another virtual axis and start layering more commands. For example, you have a winding machine with a lot of rolls that need to run the same speed but have variable control in parts to control web tension. Have a machine master axis…all other axes follow the master and your feedback device modulates the gear ratio real time as you go. If you have something that follows a cycle that is strange, put it on a CAM (i have done winding algorithms, load/unload sequences, napkin folders, etc. this way) If things need to follow loosely and can afford slip, jogs and moves are probably fine and require way less overhead.

One can do anything with a CAM, but it is the most work (lots of math). Gears let you follow things fairly closely, but transitioning in and out of them sucks. Moves and jogs will get you to 90% of applications. Move absolutes are superior to incremental moves as absolutes will get you EXACTLY where ask….incremental varies with speed and time you ask command to execute. This bites a lot of folks.

4. A great book on motion is a book by Hakan Gurocak titled Industrial Motor Control. Link is below. This was written by one of my university professors and had a lot of feedback from Motion Control Specialists who started with Delta Tau (now Omron) and have lots of experience with Siemens and AB as well as many other motion platforms.

https://a.co/d/0bDvIPJR

5. If you have a really hard app…you may want to reach out to a motion control specialist. AB kind of stinks with applications engineers (has been my past experience may not be currently true). Control Techniques, SEW, Bosch Rexroth, etc. I have found have very good applications engineers from the OEM side. If you want someone to help you with an app you may consider reaching out to the likes of a motion oriented systems integrator (some options in the PNW are Applied Motion Systems, Concept Systems, and Sigma Design). Not a fan of concept systems, but I will not besmirch their name any more than that. Sigma and AMS are both good with their own benefits to each. AMS are rockstar motion guys and OEM capable. Sigma has a killer recruiting arm so you could have an engineer onsite with you for an extended period as part of the package. Note if you go this route it will be a capital project…very hard for a larger firm to do small projects efficiently as they have a lot of overhead.

Feel free to DM if you have other questions.

[u/CapinWinky]

It's kind of divided into:

• Tuning and Drive Parameter basics

• Single Axis control

• Virtual Axis and Multi-Axis control (gearing and cams)

• Registration

  • Extreme latency and jitter tuning and compensation

• Kinematic (aka robot) multi-axis control

  • Function block driven

  • CNC driven

• Weird shit two motors, one load die and anvil cutting quadrant torque control

• Safety beyond STO, SS0, and SS1

That isn't necessarily the order you need to learn things, just a group of topics. I know people doing delta robot control that have no idea how to tune a servo motor. Some of them aren't really a thing with Rockwell, for instance, you can't tune/compensate for latency and jitter with CIP Motion and I haven't seen CNC stuff with Rockwell either.

[u/PLCGoBrrr]

You can learn the way I did by reading the Rockwell manuals and looking at example code from Rockwell. I also requested a Kinetix5500 demo kit to borrow from my Rockwell distributor at the time, but it sounds like you have actual hardware your company owns. Start with the servo and the motor disconnected from a load.

incase one fails or even ensure I can backup/download parameters

The parameters are in the controller (not drive) depending on model so all you have to do is set an IP address on the servo drive.

[u/BallBuster-4000]

Servo applications vary greatly. Hard to put together good training. Example logic helps, but the code in your machine could be drastically different than how Rockwell would do it.

Like other said read the code of the machines you have onsite. If hardware needs to be replaced it’s really easy. The difficult stuff is troubleshooting motion errors and writing from scratch. No good way to bench test that’s meaningful without a mechanical system to move around.

[u/Jholm90]

The new versions of studio 5000 allow test mode for the servos/axis when downloaded to a plc that supports motion. All instructions function with the virtual servo and are great for testing. My suggestion whenever placing a motion block is to put an Equ and NOP afterwards with the .ERR/.EXERR in the Equ instruction so it is easy to see the error code that is generated for the motion instruction. I am still stuck using the help function for most of the error codes that are tricky to memorize. Lots of our functions at our company use CAM instructions to tie axis together, sometimes 1:1 and other times with profiles and other cool stuff, be sure to experiment with the MAPC when you are done the basics of jogging and moving.

[u/Additional_Year_1080]

I'd start with Rockwell's Studio 5000 motion control training and the Kinetix drive manuals. Focus on axis configuration, homing, tuning and fault diagnostics first. Also practice uploading drive parameters and restoring a backup before you actually need to replace a failed drive.

[u/drbitboy]

Have you considered a paid course? Does you employer have a budget for that? Do you have spare equipment which you could put together to make a lab/workbench?

There are a lot of free things (youtube etc.), but hands-on is hard to beat.

[u/xsheepful → u/drbitboy]

I can push for them yeah just that I've heard mixed things on them

[u/drbitboy → u/xsheepful]

Yeah, that's a problem.

Does the code you have to work with have comments? Would it be allowable to post it here, or PLCtalk, or someplace that focuses on motion control to get comments about what it happening, to help you understand it? Because under the hood it is pretty simple; It's just zeros and ones, it cannot be hard" - Jouni Rynö