How to Setup IAI RCON EtherCAT Gateway with Omron Machine Automation Controller N Series PLC

Hello everyone, today I will illustrate how to set up an RCON EtherCAT Gateway with an Omron Machine Automation Controller N series PLC.

I am Tom Trinh, Senior Application Engineer for Valin Corporation. Let's get started.

So first and foremost, I want to show you the hardware layout that I have on this setup. So first and foremost I have an IAl RCON system here. By the way, this RCON system you can actually have up to 16 axis setup or configure per gateway. But right now in my setup I have only two actuators connect to it. So this module here is an IAI RCON-GW-EC, so that's my Ethernet gateway and next to it I have an RCON -PC-2 which allow me to connect to two actuators. And one port is connected to a slider and that is an RCP6-SA4C-WA which is absolute encoder and 35P-16-300. That means 300 millimeter with a 16 millimeter screw -P3-P. And then I have a gripper and that is RCP4-GRSML-I-28P-30-14-P3-P. So that is a 14 millimeter gripper. I have also a 24 Volt power supply in here that I connect and power up the RCON system and also for my NJ501-1300. What I also have here is an EtherCAT cable connect from the EtherCAT port of the NJ501-1300 to the Ether CAT port of the RCON system. As far as the software on the PC I'm using the Sysmac Studio software.

That is the Omron development software that allow me to program my machine automation controller PLC and I connect to it via Ethernet cable. And as far as the program and configure the RCON system, I'm using gateway parameter configuration software to configure the RCON system and also a robocylinder software. And I'm using the USB cable to configure and program the RCON system. So what I'm going to do next here is showing you the an IAI gateway parameter configuration tool. And before you launch this, make sure that the mode switch on the RCON system is on manual mode. OK, you then connect the USB cable and make sure also the USB port is configured correctly on your control panel and that will tell you what com port that you want to connect to. Once you've done that, you launch the IAI gateway parameter configuration tool. And it will come up like this and you want to select the COM port that is setup or configured under control panel under device manager and you should see that com port. OK so that's what you want to arrow down, select that. And then you click OK. And once you've done that, you should be online and you want to make sure that you set up the address correctly that you set up on your RCON system. So right now my setup is address 0 and I'm set up the mode to be simple direct mode 4 word and I'll show you a little bit more what it means by that later on.

Next thing I want to do is to transfer this configuration to the RCON. So what I would do next is click WRITE and then once you click WRITE, this will come up and you want to select yes and that's how it transfers the parameters to the RCON system. What we want to do next is to install the ESI file for that RCON system into Sysmac Studio. So what do you want to do next is to double click on your EtherCAT, and right mouse click here under the master and select display ESI library and providing that you already have the file store in a folder, what you want to do is to click install file. It's going to show the window here and you want to browse through that window where you have your ESI file. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to browse to that folder. It's in here, ESI. So that's the file you want to click that and you want to click open. I'm not going to do it because I already have it OK, but once you install it, it should display down here. OK. So I'm going to close this. At this point you want what you want to do next is to go online by clicking that icon. Once you online, what you want to do next is right mouse click on the master. And select compare and merge. After you select the compare and merge, this window will show up. When you do this the first time, it will show that it's not matching. Mine is already matched because I've done it. And since yours, when you do it at first time, it doesn't match. So what you want to do is to select apply actual network configuration OK. And that will bring what it has actually into the configuration on this side. And so you want to do that once you've done. Like I said, I'm not going to click this because mine is already matched. I'm just going to close this. What I want to show you next is how the RCON Memory mapping are mapped into the machine automation controller and this is how it works. So let me zoom in here. So as you can see, what it shows up on here is that the first 14 bytes are used for the status and so forth. So this column here show from the PLC to the RCON and this column here show the RCON to the PLC input.

OK and this columns here shows the relative byte. OK, so as you can see the first 14 bytes are used for the gateway control and the status. And then the starting at byte 16 to byte 22 are used for the Axis 0. And then for Axis 1 is byte 24 to byte 30. Having said that, the system that I'm demonstrating here, there are only two axes. If I switch to my Sysmac Studio. And you will see that if you look under memory map it shows up everything here. As I mentioned, the first eight registers are used for the gateway control and the gateway status. And then the next 4 words,  9 through C  are used or axis actually 8 through C are used for Axis zero and D through 10 are used for Axis one. So these are control signal meaning from the PLC to the RCON. Now, from the RCON to the PLC once again, which is started with the IN. The first are used for the RCON status signal and then starting from 9 through C. Those are the status which has the status for the Axis zero. And from D through 10 are status for Axis one. So that's how the breakdown. Now if I go back and look at this a little bit further. I'm going to go back this slide here. I'm going to go to the next slide. Remember I was mentioning the 4 WORD for control and 4 WORD for the status. So what those means? So if I zoom in here so from the PLC to the RCON, the first two registers are for setting up the position that you want to go to OK. So if I want to go 200.10 millimeter, I would put in 210 in here now. So that's if you want to go to that particular stroke length OK. Or if you program all the point table already, you can just select the pattern here. There are two ways to do it. Controlling it via commanded position or control it by selecting the point table that resides in the IAI. And then as far as the control signal, there's servo on. there's a jog, there's also the Home bit. STP means to pause the actuator. RES is to reset it. CSTR is to start the move, so these are control signals from the PLC to the RCON system. You notice there are four registers here. OK, now for the status of the axis, the first two registers are for the current position. And the third register is the feedback showing what pattern of the position number that you selected and the last register is showing when you finish the home PEND means when the position is completed, ALM means the bit for the alarm SV means when servo turns on it gives you a status that servo is actually on and some more status bits here. OK, so that's what these control signal and the status signal are breaking down. OK, so if I go back to here to my Sysmac Studio. Now I'm going to go ahead and go online here to focus on this so it can show you so right now if I look at this. Current position right now is at 290.20 millimeter for my slide OK, and that's where it's at right now. So if I want to go to 0, all I have to do is to put in this register here and it's a zero hit enter, so now if I want to command it to go to 0 what I can do is to turn on this bit here RCON_CS_CSTR. As soon as I do that, the actuator will move to zero and this register here will show 0 when actuator actually moves to 0. So I'm going to go ahead and do it right now and you see the move. And it's now at 0. Now if I want to command it to go through 300 millimeter. So that mean 30,000 actually. I'm going to go ahead and select that and click enter and here we go. It moves to 300 millimeter and it shows me the current position here. Same thing with my gripper which is my second axis. What I'm going to do is to tell it to go to 3 millimeters, actually 6 millimeter 'cause I'm moving 3 on each side. So I'm going to command it. As soon as I do this, or click this CSTR for axis one, the gripper will move and you will see the actual position display here. There you go, so it's 300 if I want to go 5 millimeter to open it up a little bit more. I can certainly do that. Click enter here and click true. And there you go the current position for the gripper is now  5 millimeter actually. So that is how to set up IAI RCON EtherCAT Gateway System with Omron Machine Automation Controller, NJ and NX series PLC.

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