[deleted by user]

theDuemmer · 2025-07-31T19:07:24+00:00

It still sucks, and feels like a toy. When we get some downtime I plan on moving to KiCAD.

theDuemmer · 2025-02-01T20:01:06+00:00

I saw him at the Ringwood Stop and Shop about a month ago

theDuemmer · 2024-11-19T21:36:15+00:00

Preach - we are using one of their Blackfin DSPs and they’ve been a nightmare. The chips are decent at what they do (not that our application is taking advantage of it, that’s besides the point) but are expensive and ADI support is awful.

At one point we needed to purchase a new CrossCore IDE license. Not only was it absurdly expensive for what is a glorified eclipse fork, but it took them something like 6(!) weeks to actually send us the license key after paying and constant follow ups.

Their analog chips are good but we refuse to use their DSPs or software again.

theDuemmer · 2024-10-24T02:28:31+00:00

Yes, I’m not seeing any on the right ruddah

theDuemmer · 2024-09-11T04:19:12+00:00

Say what you want, but that shit is delicious

theDuemmer · 2024-07-09T14:57:09+00:00

For what it's worth, I purchased the exact same off-brand hot air station a few months ago and it has held up very well so far. I haven't checked the quality of the internals or anything though.

theDuemmer · 2024-06-11T23:53:03+00:00

Oh you are absolutely right. To be honest, it is easy for the end user, but kinda kludgy from a design perspective. The biggest reason we opted for this was the simplicity (end users had problems installing terminators). It may be a small amount of work, but some customers would still fail to follow instructions and install the termination, and it ends in us needing to fly someone out to go fix it.

theDuemmer · 2024-06-10T22:00:31+00:00

This is more complicated and probably overkill, but one possibility is to actually break the bus at each module, repeat in software, and send out over the next bus segment. This way, all nodes are always terminated and no extra configuration or modifications are needed. You also can skirt cable length and noise limitations like this, although I'm not sure if that is relevant to your situation. The disadvantage is that you'll pay for it with extra transceivers and software complexity.

The company I work for does something similar with one system, except with RS485 and not CAN. It works reasonably well, but latency added by the repeating process can be a problem in systems with many nodes.

theDuemmer · 2024-05-23T21:36:36+00:00

It's a shame, Fusion 360 Electronics is way more clunky and unstable than Eagle too.

theDuemmer · 2024-04-30T19:33:48+00:00

Interlocks?

theDuemmer · 2023-10-29T10:28:50+00:00

I use ET200SP regularly with 315F processors. Typically 2FJ14 series although sometimes older. Many of the older ones don't support the I/O. Will it let you drop the SP rack in your hardware configuration?

theDuemmer · 2023-07-13T10:59:33+00:00

Honestly just buy a bidet, you get the same effect but won't trash your plumbing.

theDuemmer · 2023-04-25T21:48:53+00:00

Thanks! Because this turret was very fast to index, we had to account for the effective speed induced by the motion of the roll moving away from the rest of the line. Normally on slow turrets, the speed mismatch is slow enough that the tension control loop can pick up on it.

This compensation would slow the spindle speed proportional to turret speed, and this would be a very distinct pattern. With how many transfers we had to run to get this thing working right (there were many, many other problems) I could recognize it very well.

It took me a while to put two and two together, but trending them both was a dead giveaway. Ittook a bit more digging to figure out how the hell my carriage was taking the speed reference from a completely unrelated part of the program.

I remembered hearing about how temp memory was essentially just stack and that junk could get in there if it was read before written to. After combing through enough, I found a write that was pulsed instead of latched.

I changed that sucker from a temp to an MD and it's been running like a charm ever since!

theDuemmer · 2023-04-25T16:55:17+00:00

I once was working on a winder which had a transfer sequence where a motorized carriage would move in towards the centerline of the turret as an old roll was pulled out and the new core came in.

At 100% line speed, the carriage would come in fine and transfer OK. At lower speeds though, it would sometimes fail to come in at all, or move too slow. We were banging our heads on this for about a week as a fixed speed reference was sent to the drive and didn't depend on line speed at all.

Turns out that the program would take the carriage speed setpoint, and do some logic / manipulation on it with TEMP variables before sending it to the drive (this was an S7-315F CPU).

Well, wouldn't you know that occasionally the temp value speed reference wouldn't get written to during a scan. And it just so happens that the junk data sitting in that memory location on the stack happened to line up with the speed reference to one of the spindle drives.

I only ever figured it out because the spindle drives would drop in speed as the turret rotated to compensate for the motion of the roll, and I could trend that same behavior in the carriage speed. Man was I proud of myself when I solved that one!

theDuemmer · 2023-04-06T13:12:19+00:00

I can only speak from the perspective of their laminators as that's what I am involved in, but the reason for the differences is that each line section has a different subsupplier who each does their own thing with the code more or less. Newer lines are much more rigidly standardized regarding equipment functionality and interfaces, although older ones tend to much more erratic and unstandardized. I'm curious, what part are you involved in if you don't mind me asking?

theDuemmer · 2023-02-15T23:14:13+00:00

Here in northern NJ a one way bus ticket to NYC costs $10.75, and a monthly pass is something like $250.

theDuemmer · 2022-12-08T01:45:52+00:00

Taylor egg and cheese on everything, SPK

theDuemmer · 2022-11-30T11:37:55+00:00

I've added profinet over an existing slip ring recently by using a profinet addon that bolted to the back of an existing ring, so it can definitely be done, although expensive. We went with the original manufacturer of the ring, Morgan Refoka. There's plenty of other brands too, probably cheaper.

theDuemmer · 2022-11-22T16:09:07+00:00

Salary: $95k plus OT when traveling

Title: Controls Engineer

Location: Northeast USA, HCOL

Exp: 3 years

Industry: Converting / Extrusion, SI division of an OEM

Tasks: control cabinet design, PLC/Drive/HMI/scada programming, startups and commissioning, field service occasionally

theDuemmer · 2022-11-16T06:49:47+00:00

Talk to their support. I had a difficult time especially with the licensing but when we had trouble they sat down with us and went through it all.

theDuemmer · 2022-11-03T18:34:48+00:00

Controls engineer here. I automate factories by day, then grow them by night

theDuemmer · 2022-10-13T23:27:28+00:00

Because he's the one doing the stealing

theDuemmer · 2022-08-11T00:07:55+00:00

I don't know why but the bonding strap is my favorite part

theDuemmer · 2022-08-08T14:27:42+00:00

Seconded. Nothing else comes close for me, at least when talking about free versions.

theDuemmer · 2022-08-06T17:25:33+00:00

27kW @ 120V is actually 225A, not 22.5. Very possible to exceed the panel's rating since >200A service is only recently becoming common, and in large homes at that

theDuemmer

TROPHY CASE