Introduction to using the Visualisation
The purpose of the visualisation screen is to provide a method of testing, developing and commissioning axes of motion by providing a GUI to the motion function blocks available in the "Axis Drive Function Block". This provides a two part service by enabling verification of new software additions to the drive function block as well as testing of physical axes.
When loading the visualisation from the PLC project the user will be shown the following code.
Warning! By default, a program is running that emulates a slit-set by gearing 4 axes (North, South, East, West blades) to masters representing vertical and horizontal gap sizes and gap centres. This program can be disabled by navigating to the I/O screen along the top menu of the visualisation and selected "Disable MC".
The main screen is split in to 5 key areas:
1. Menu Select
This header bar allows selecting of different menu screens (discussed later)
2. Axis Power
These controls allow triggering of the Enable, FW Enable, and BW enable controls of an axis including the Override value (0-100%). If the limit switches have been hardware linked then it is not possible to manually trigger the FW and BW enable controls.
The additional indicators for FW ENABLED and BW ENABLED indicate whether the axis is allowed to move forward or backwards in its current state, this is particularly useful when linking axes as this value will reflect the linked limit switches of any slave axes.
3. Basic Controls
The controls highlighted here and the basic motion functions required for testing a hardware axis.
The Read Position displays the current position of the axis.
Axis Name is a user defined string that does not define any operation.
Axis Selection allows cycling between axes of operation.
"Velocity move" allows a positive or negative continuous velocity move.
"Stop" will stop any current velocity move.
"Reset" will reset any error states of an axis.
"Abs Move" makes an absolute position movement, velocity must be non zero.
"Rel Move" makes a relative position movement, velocity must be non zero.
The "+" and "-" buttons will jog the axis at the current set velocity.
The "Calibration" indicator displays whether the selected axis has been homed.
4. Axis State Machine
The state machine is a copy of the one available in the PLC Open Motion Control standard, additional information regarding this can be found in the PLC Open documentation available here.
5. Advanced Controls
The header at the top of the advanced controls section allows selection between multiple different additional controls.
The gearing tab allows gearing in (and out) of single-master and multi-master gear configurations. The multi-master gearing differs from single-master gearing as it uses a single LREAL variable to define the gear ratio compared to the Numerator (LREAL)/Denominator (INT) configuration of single-master.
The Parameters tab allows read and write capabilities to many NC axis parameters as defined by the function block in the PLC Open standard.
Advanced homing is a work-in-progress tab that will eventually allow the testing of advanced homing routines (as defined by the advanced homing standard from PLC Open). At this time only the step for homing to an absolute switch is available and not all parameters are configurable in the visualisation.
The Simulation tab allows virtual simulation of axes if no physical hardware is present. It is a simple configuration that allows the defining of high and low positions that will "trigger" virtual limit switches (that in turn will disable forward and backward motion) as well as configuring of a absolute switch flag that will trigger between certain axis positions.
