xilix systems llc

High Pressure Burst Testing

Shawn Quick — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:12:07 +0000

Xilix Systems recently designed a pressure test system for a company that manufactures stainless steel tubing. As part of quality control procedures, this company tests a sample from each tubing batch to ensure it meets proper burst pressure specifications. Faced with the challenge of developing test pressures in excess of 40,000 psi, the natural selection for the pressure source was KMT, and for this application we chose the SLV-30 intensifier unit. We designed a vessel in which to perform the actual tests, and integrated it with a custom touch screen operator interface console. Using custom automation controls we are able to safely increase and maintain system pressure. The accuracy of the controls allows the system to output exact burst pressure reading which is extremely important for quality control. We have the expertise to create uniquely designed solutions for a variety of customers, so when you’re looking for a creative solution, think of Xilix!

Food Industry Waterjet

Bob Klosinski — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:56:50 +0000

Xilix Systems LLC along with our partner KMT Waterjet provided a customer with a demonstration of our capabilities in slicing various types of produce.The video demonstrates some of the advantages of using waterjet technologies over physical blades including non contact cutting and the speed of cutting. One of the demonstrations ran a line speed of 200 inches per minute with cut results just as good as any other speed we tried. Plug in some very conservative estimates of six inch wide product weighing just one pound each, and some quick math yields 400 heads or 400 pounds of product per minute. Keeping the conveyors full, that comes out to a mind boggling 24,000 pounds per hour. Imagine replacing ten conventional increment slicers with a single machine. Add to that the benefit of no blades to sharpen, replace, or cross contaminate your product; and it’s hard to justify not investing in waterjet technology. Give us a call for a personal demonstration so you can see this amazing technology first hand. We will tailor a machine to fit your exact needs.

Delta Tau Training Class Schedule Now Available

Jeremy Waters — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:54:36 +0000

Delta Tau has announced their training schedule for 2010 at the main office in Chatsworth, California. These classes are an excellent introduction into the PMAC environment with explanations from the factory on how the PMAC works as well as some hands on experience with some practical application examples. These classes are extremely valuable for people who want to learn a little more about the PMAC and aid in troubleshooting in the event something goes wrong with a current PMAC driven system. The two different types of classes set now are the Power PMAC and Turbo PMAC classes with CNC and MACRO classes available upon request. You can either contact Xilix Systems or Delta Tau to sign up for either of these classes or to request a CNC or MACRO class.

Power PMAC Class

April 13-15

June 15-17

September 28-30

November 9-11

Turbo PMAC Class

June 21-25

October 4-8

November 15-19

Xilix Systems and Delta Tau extend their relationship

Shawn Quick — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:55:06 +0000

Xilix Systems is pleased to announce that we have been named as the newest distributor for Delta Tau Data Systems Inc. When is comes to the Delta Tau product line, we are far more than just your average distributor. Xilix Systems maintains an expert staff for these products, and we are able to provide the highest possible level of support. We will be servicing the Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Louisiana region; and look forward to assisting you with all of your Delta Tau needs.

Getting the Beckhoff EL7041 to Settle

Bob Klosinski — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 01:19:53 +0000

One issue I ran into while commissioning the Beckhoff EL7041 stepper module was that oscillation was occurring during settling, even though there was no encoder attached. Now I chose stepper motors specifically because the stages that the motors are connected to are holding very high magnification cameras. When the motors are stopped I need them to be stable and not move at all. The problem that is happening with the EL7041 is that the controller is following an internal counter of the stepper drive and attempting to control it like a servo. It’s treating the stepper like a servo drive and correcting even though there is no encoder attached.

To get rid of this problem, I did the following

1: Set the Axis Controller to “Position C ontroller PID (with Ka)
By doing so you can allow the controller to set a deadband. Basically a tolerance that if the controller gets within a certain tolerance of it’s final position, it stops trying to get to the exact position.

2: Set the deadband range
Set the “Position Control: Dead Band Position Deviation” to a small number. This is the tolerance that the motor will stop trying to correct if it reaches it. I have 0.0002mm and could probably go smaller than that. Also I enable the “Disable I-Part during active positioning”. This keeps the controller from attempting to correct excessively during accel and decel of the stepper.

Conclusion:

Now all of this would have been different if I used steppers with encoders. In that case I would have just treated the steppers as servos and tuned appropriately. There may be a better way to do this in the future, generally there should be no need for any sort of tuning for a stepper, but if you happened to have bought these and have this issue, then you know what to do! As an added bonus, even if you can handle the oscillation, the motors will get warm because they’ll be constantly moving. With this little hack you can keep the motors cooler and running longer.

Always update your software (and be cautious of new components)

Bob Klosinski — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:43:15 +0000

When I used to do service computers for a few customers I always made a point of telling everyone to update their computers. Under Windows there are many advantages especially with the introduction of SP3 for XP including performance, security, and stability. Since I’m no longer doing PC support I might as well let you know why it’s also important to update your control software, especially if it’s the software directly running the system as in Beckhoff’s TwinCAT.

During our first Beckhoff trial I downloaded a demo version of TwinCAT to try things out. This was in September of ’09. A project came to our plate that required the use of a few stepper motors to position a table to align some fiducials. To try this out I purchased the stepper components (EL7041) and a coupler (EK1100). The EL7041′s are a brand new terminal from Beckhoff that can handle up to 5 Amp/Phase Steppers with encoders for a very reasonable cost. Once I received the stepper drives I plugged everything in and lo and behold, the steppers were completely disabled!

I tried everything I could think of and nothing would work. I tried uninstalling TwinCAT and reinstalling, and surprisingly, after that everything worked! Brilliant, I thought, all is good. The configuration I was using only called for steppers without encoders, nice and easy. I got it fired up, setup all my motion parameters and got the motor moving. Next thing I noticed is that while positioning, the steppers were oscillating! They wouldn’t settle down and stop in a final position.

Considering that the steppers are positioning a table that is being viewed by cameras at a high magnification, any oscillation will be clearly visible. So I called our local Beckhoff motion guy and setup a meeting. We started playing around with our setup and found out that he couldn’t get the motors to enable either! We played around for a little while trying to figure things out and as it turns out, because the modules are so new, you need the latest TwinCAT to get them to move.

As to why the oscillation occurs on a stepper motor without an encoder, you’ll have to wait for the next post. However, the moral of the story is, 1. Make sure you use the latest software 2. Be cautious of using the latest components out there, you may need to do a little bit of beta testing yourself!

Beckhoff AMD Blue Screen (BSOD)

Bob Klosinski — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:05:33 +0000

When I first actually tried to run Beckhoff’s TwinCAT on my home PC I ran into bluescreens as soon as I tried to get into Realtime mode. I found a quick answer to my issues. This was found on a German Bulletin Board btw…

Open up regedit and change the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BECKHOFF\TWINCAT\SYSTEM KEY ‘DisableC1E’ to ’0′

That got rid of my BSOD’s! After that I only had a few more issues to get through until I had a fully running system. More on that later…

Industrial Vision different interfaces for different needs

Bob Klosinski — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:00:30 +0000

Recently, Xilix had the opportunity to quote a retrofit which included two vision cameras from a late 80′s machine. This particular piece of equipment is called a Post Etch Punch and simply aligns a set of fiducials on circuit board and punchs two alignment holes in the panel so multiple layers are perfectly aligned to each other. In analyzing the machine we managed to learn quite a bit about the world of industrial vision as it stands today.

In analyzing what cameras would be the best replacement for the old analog cameras, we came to the conclusion that GigE cameras would suite our needs perfectly. Below you’ll find a rundown for why we chose GigE cameras.

CameraLink:

Camera Link is a standardized format between camera manufacturers which allows for extremely fine timing and extremely high bandwidth transmissions.

Pros:

The advantages are guaranteed bandwidth, very high bandwidth, and high reliability.

Cons:

Cost, setup time is somewhat longer than the alternatives, frame grabber needed.

Firewire:

Pros:

High Bandwidth, fine timing, self powered (for most applications), price!

Cons:

Short cable lengths, can run into issues when running many cameras (not always though)

GigE:

Pros:

Bandwidth, cost, standardized (for the most part), quickly becoming the standard in the industry.

Cons:

Timing isn’t as accurate as the other two, requires external power supply (until PoE cameras become more common). Can technically run out of bandwidth, as it isn’t guaranteed.

USB:

Pros:

Cheap.

Cons:

Low Bandwidth, No guaranteed bandwidth, short cable lengths.

So in the end we choose to quote GigE cameras due to the cost, standardization, and our timing requirements were fairly lax. Watch out for a new blog post when I talk about manufacturers, and then later about the different types of vision software out there and the advantages of each of them!

PLC platforms in 2009

Bob Klosinski — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:20:43 +0000

In starting Xilix I’ve had the opportunity to trim the fat and truly analyze which PLC platforms work the best for us. I’ve personally had professional experience with the entire gamut of the controls world from Allen Bradley to Siemens, and everything in between. This year I began researching what’s new in the world and have found some really great advancements in the software realm of PLC control.

Beckhoff TwinCat:

Now Beckhoff is based off the tried and true ControlSyS platform. Being that this is the first time I’ve used this platform, I was a bit shocked to see how raw it really is. Coming from Step 7 it’s somewhat refreshing and disturbing at the same time. Gone are the wizards and convenience features of Step 7 and is the raw programming interface which has been missing since the DOS age. Now at first I found this annoying and inconvenient. However, since using it, I’ve grown to love it. It feels functional, and extremely fast. I no longer wait for windows to open, I no longer have to start up a GUI just to add global variables. It’s like going from Visual Studio to VI. Visual Studio may be nice and convenient, but it seems to lack the raw underlying power of my favorite text editor VI. While this may not be for everyone, it’s definitely feels right to me.

Siemens Step7 Basic:

Now on the far end of the spectrum comes Step7 Basic from Siemens. Introduced for the new S7-1200 PLC Step7 Basic is a total cleanup of Step7. This is where heavily GUI dependent PLC software needs to go. It’s far more intuitive then Step7 and seems to remove a lot of the Feature Overload that Step7 has become. The true integration of HMI development, network topology, component selection, make it extremely easy to use. If you’re just starting with controls development this is exactly where I would start. Once you’re comfortable with this I’ld say move to TwinCat.

Now this is just an extremely short synopsis of what’s new today in PLC Software Development. I’ll make sure to dig deeper into these systems along the way!

IEC 61131-3

Bob Klosinski — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:09:32 +0000

Now there’s always a need to standardize in the automation market. By using the IEC 61131-3 Standard you can migrate between PLC platforms simply and easily. I find it great that most PLC manufacturers are adopting the standard and generally are updating to include all of the languages involved. I’ll be writing a post soon to discuss which languages I believe are the best for what applications and also what my personal favorite PLC platforms are.