Welcome to the final part of our PLC training for beginners! In this part, We will exercise Studio 5000 programming software and download our Ladder code to the controller.
This training is structured into four parts. You are now in Part 4. If you landed here and want to start at the beginning, feel free to jump to Part 1: PLC Basics or go back to Part 3: PLC Programming.
- History of the PLC
- PLC Architecture
- Rockwell automation PLCs
- Central Processing Unit- CPU
- Power Supply
- Digital And Analog IO
- Communication
- Choose suitable PLC hardware for your application
- Studio 5000 Introduction
- Studio 5000 Installation and Activation
- Get Started with Studio 5000
- Ladder Diagram Basic Instructions
- IO Configuration
- Let’s develop a basic program…
- Configure the controller in Studio5000
- Download logic to the controller
Though this is general PLC training for beginners, we will be focused on Rockwell automation PLCs and software in the examples.
Part 4 - PLC practical training
Let’s take everything we’ve learned until now and implement a real-life application.
Let's develop a basic program...
SOO - Sequence Of Operation
The SOO is the story of the process. It will specify the equipment involved with the process (sensors, motors, valves) and its rule in the story.
The story of our process: Level control of a water tank. Two Level switches will produce indication of the level in the tank, an on/off (digital) valve will be open and close according to the level switces.
Our SOO is as follow:
Equipment list:
| # | Equipment | Name | IO |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Water Tank |
C101 |
|
|
2 |
Level Switch |
LS102 |
Input: Digital switch |
|
3 |
Level Switch |
LS103 |
Input: Digital switch |
|
4 |
Valve |
XV104 |
Output: Digital on/off |
Operation list:
| # | Condition | Delay | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
LS102 digital input is 'Off' |
5 Sec |
Open XV104 |
|
2 |
LS103 digital input is 'On' |
10 Sec |
Close XV104 |
|
3 |
LS103 digital input is 'On' |
120 Sec |
Alarm - High Level |
|
4 |
LS102 digital input is 'Off' |
180 Sec |
Alarm - No Supply |
P&ID - Piping and instrumentation diagram
Code
Take the time and try to write the logic for our SOO. My Code in hidden here:
Let’s tell the story:
Rung 0 – If level switch LS102 is off (level under 50%) for 5 seconds, then open valve XV104 to fill the tank.
Rung 1 – If level switch LS103 is on (level is above 80%) for 10 seconds, then stop filling the tank by closing XV104.
Rung 2 – If level switch LS103 is on (level is above 80%) for 120 seconds, then it means that the valve is closed for two minutes, and still the tank level isn’t going down. Turn on an alarm for “High Level In Tank C101”.
Rung 2 – If level switch LS102 is off (level is under 50%) for 180 seconds, then it means that the valve is open for three minutes and still the tank level isn’t rising. Turn on an alarm for “No Supply To Tank C101”.
Look at the following trends. Do they tell the same story?
The same SOO ladder code can be written in ten different ways, and a code can continuously be improved. So check my code and make sure you didn’t forget anything.
Connect your laptop to the PLC (Or Emulator)
Great! We have the code ready to download, but first we have to configure the communication to the controller.
Configure the controller in Studio 5000
As described in part 3, We have to configure the IO Configuration with the actual hardware. So now, we only need to configure the communication:
For Emulator – Only change the type of the controller to Emulator, and change the controller slot according to the emulator slot.
For Real Controller – Configure the IP address to the actual controller IP (if the controller has no IP configured yet, you should assign IP via the BootP tool).
RSLinx Classic
It’s time to configure the driver that allow us to communicate with the controller:
For Emulator – Choose the Configure Driver icon, and pick the “Virtual Backplan” Driver.
For Real Controller – Choose the Configure Driver icon and Choose the “Ethernet Devices” Driver. Then, assign the same IP address as the IP of the actual controller.
Download/Upload or edit Online
Until now we were programed in Offline state. After we configured our controller in RSLinx we only need to download the program.
Now the controller is in RUN mode and the logic are scanned:
Whats Now
Congrats! You finished our PLC training.
We only touched the tip of the iceberg. If you want to learn more about PLC programming, please join our newsletter and get this PLC training (With Part 5 bonus) as a pdf file and much more…
