Entries for the 'Automation' Category

I've done a lot of PLC programming over the last few years. Siemens, Rockwell, Beckhoff, Mitsubishi, Panasonic... if it's IEC61131-3 compliant, I've probably written a few rungs on it. However, I recently ran across an interesting problem that completely stumped me. I was doing a quick test on an S7-1200 PLC (programmed in TIA Portal V13) where I needed to perform a non-time critical operation approximately once a second within a re-usable FB. The two rungs that confounded me and ...

Continue reading →

The 2014 NI Week Conference in Austin, Texas hits day three of four today Wednesday, August 6. The 20th Annual National Instruments Conference is an opportunity for those working in the fields of engineering and science to come together in the spirit of sharing information, inspiring innovation and exploring new technologies. DMC has sent engineers from each of our Chicago, Boston, and Denver offices to present on topics ranging from automation, to battery management systems and vision i...

Continue reading →

I recently presented at the inaugural Siemens Bier Tek conference in San Diego. Bier Tek was designed to help micro-brewers and craft brewers learn about how to take advantage of technology to improve their brewing operations. DMC partnered with Siemens MES to showcase the Simatic IT Line Monitoring System (LMS) software package. Simatic IT LMS is an ideal platform to help even small brewers improve performance in the filling and packaging areas of their breweries.  The LMS presentati...

Continue reading →

DMC attended the annual Siemens Automation Summit last month, held June 23 - 26, 2014. We enjoyed four days of learning and networking with new friends at Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort in Orlando, FL. The week kicked off with Monday night's popular Connect Event. This casual cocktail event allowed attendees to build their network using a mobile friendly app or website developed by DMC and Prism Systems to connect and share contact information. Attendees also got a previ...

Continue reading →

DMC is proud to announce its affiliation with the Siemens SIMATIC IT Partner Program. SIMATIC IT Partners offer value added services helping customers realize solutions tailored to their unique business environments in order to maximize the efficiency of MES installations. We're excited to join a community of technical experts with industry specific know-how who are recognized as high-level consultants dedicated to helping customers achieve their business goals. SIMATIC IT Partners a...

Continue reading →

When writing a vision application, it’s easy to imagine noise within an image as a sinister character hiding in the shadows and fingering the end of a grease-slick mustache. "That’s a nice straight line you have there," his voice nasally dripping with malice. "It would be a shame if anything happened to it." The problem is, he's right. LabVIEW has a suite of powerful vision tools, most of which work fantastically well out-of-the-box. IMAQ Find Straight E...

Continue reading →

While working with a customer on a recent RSLogix 5000 project (now called Studio 5000), there was a need to protect some proprietary source code. In this particular case, DMC had developed a custom Add-On Instruction (AOI) to be used within the project that contained some unique logic that the client wished to protect. This is incredibly easy to do. Rockwell provides an easy tool for this that comes prepackaged with RSLogix.  Since protecting intellectual property or touchy algorithms w...

Continue reading →

String concatenation. If a programming language supports strings, it's going to support concatenating them. The means of doing so are usually straightforward and often times involve a simple library call or even a one character operator such as "+" or "&." Internal string representation typically follows one of two paradigms: either the string uses a unique terminator to signal the end of the string, or it includes within the type itself the length of the n...

Continue reading →

SyntaxHighlighter.all(); For a recent project using WinCC Professional V12, I needed to have a pop up window that could change based on the screen window that the operator clicks (motor, VFD, valve, etc.). The popup also needed to have its location change based on where the screen window was that the operator clicked. To implement the popup, I added a screen window to the starting screen. I did not assign any of its properties: I gave it a visibility animation based on an internal tag...

Continue reading →

Keyence has debuted their newest 3D vision system, the XR series. While this product is not yet available in America, DMC had the opportunity to preview the system in November. The most impressive features of the device were its depth resolution, the image repeatability, and the controller environment. The device has dual LED projectors, as well as a grayscale camera that scans the part simultaneously using structured light approach. The result is an image with extremely accurate de...

Continue reading →

Using the LJV-7000 laser head is a no-brainer for any high speed imaging measurement system. This blog will discuss how to use LabVIEW to gain full control of the many useful settings and sampling speeds (up to 64 kHz) that the laser head boasts. To control this laser, Keyence supplies the LJV-7000 series laser controller with LabVIEW drivers and a DLL. These are at the core of editing controller parameters. Here is the download link (you must login to Keyence's website to complete the do...

Continue reading →

In January, Ken Brey and I passed the AIA’s “Certified Vision Professional – Advanced” exam. Passing the exam proved that we have a high level of knowledge about developing and integrating machine vision systems, and added our names to the list of CVP-Advanced members. This certification is also one of the requirements to be listed as one National Instrument’s Alliance Partners, with a specialty in Vision. Prior to the exam, I attended the AIA’s week-l...

Continue reading →

Reporting is almost a universal requirement for new projects coming into DMC these days. As part of an HMI we developed for a customer we also installed SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) on a Siemens PLC. This is used to generate reports for production batches run on that PLC. The customer desired these reports to be in PDF format, which after some investigation was easy to do with SSRS. A little background on SSRS... SSRS is a web application that generates nice graphical reports from SQL...

Continue reading →

DMC is proud to have joined the ICONICS System Integrator Partner (SIP) program. The System Integrator Partner designation identifies DMC's proficiency with ICONICS products, and proven ability to develop ICONICS solutions, and efficient deployment of projects.  As an ICONICS System Integrator Partner, DMC will take part in the ICONICS 2013 Worldwide Customer Summit held from September 23 - 26, 2013 in Newport, Rhode Island. The theme for the event is  “Get Connected &ndas...

Continue reading →

DMC is proud to be recognized as a National Instruments Vision Specialty Partner. Alliance Partners with the Vision Specialty understand system-level solutions for vision applications and can specify and integrate all of the necessary system components, including cameras, illumination, optics, image processing software and image acquisition hardware. NI Alliance Partners participating in the Vision Specialty program have proven expertise in imaging and vision systems and are identified as exp...

Continue reading →

This is a brief tutorial on getting started with the Siemens embedded web server in the S7-1200 and S7-1500.  Using the concepts explained below, you can create a simple web page or a fully featured HTML5 web app.  Getting Started Step 1.  Turn on the web server.  To do this, navigate to the web server menu in the device configuration page and check the box to enable the web server.   Step 2: Download your project to your PLC and browse to its IP add...

Continue reading →

As a Siemens Solution Partner, DMC looks forward to attending the annual Siemens Automation Summit each year. Focused on the end users of Siemens automation products, the Summit offers opportunities for best practice sharing, networking, free hands-on training, and providing product input and prioritization for future enhancements. This year’s event, held June 24 – 27 in New Orleans, focuses on the theme of “Community. Experiences. Productivity."   This year, DMC ...

Continue reading →

I had the opportunity recently to work for a client who wanted to extract log data from a Siemens WinAC PLC using a C# .NET client. The application was archiving software that would run when another software component encountered an error. Log data was assembled from a variety of sources in the system stack, including the Siemens PLC. In order to keep the PLC's Step 7 code independent of this diagnostic logging, I used the Siemens WinAC ODK. The WinAC API exposes two interfaces, IPLC and ...

Continue reading →

Siemens offers useful tools for accessing both Simatic and SiMotion projects programmatically, in the form of registered COM Type Library DLLs. These tools offer many exciting possibilities (well, it does if you're like me, and get excited by things like automating automation tools). If you have Simatic Manager installed, the following DLLs are registered with it: S7hcom_x 1.0 Type Library - The default location on my laptop is C:\Program Files (x86)\Siemens\Step7\S7BIN\S7HCOM_X.DLL) S...

Continue reading →

I'm always trying to get my daughters, ages 8 & 5, interested in what we do here at DMC. It's a challenge because I have a hard enough time explaining what DMC does to someone I meet at a cocktail party, never mind a couple of young kids. However, I recently had two great experiences with them that actually piqued their interest. The first was a trip to Legoland in Carlsbad, California. In addition to Miniland USA, Land of Adventure and other fun rides, there also is a Lego Factory T...

Continue reading →