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

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

I am Tom Trinh, senior application engineer for Valin Corporation. Let's get started.

So here are the benefits of using the RCON EtherCAT Motion and an Omron machine automation controller together as a solution. It is a great cost effective solution when you use more than two axis and it will reduce the wiring tremendously because you no longer have to worry about the regular inputs and outputs because it's all done through the EtherCAT cable. The development time will be reduced significantly now because you don't have to create the structure with all the bits and the registers. And also on the programming portion of it, tt will cut down a lot of programming as well and you will see it as I go through it later. It supports PLC open function blocks of IEC61131-3 for the motion control. You can program it either with ladder diagram or structure text. In the example that I illustrate here will be ladder diagram. You'll be able to also perform linear interpolation, circle interpolation, camming, etc.

What I would like to show you next is my hardware layout. So what I have here is the IAI RCON-GW-ECM which is the EtherCAT Motion. And next to it is RCON-AC-2 where I connect the Actuator RCA-GD3NA-I-10-2S-50-A1-N, and that means this is a 50 millimeter stroke length with a 2 millimeter pitch and then on the axis one I connected RCA2-RP4NA-I-20-4-50-A1-N. This rod cylinder has a 50 millimeter stroke length and a four millimeter pitch. And you wanna know that because later on that's what you need to set up in the PLC. Let's see what else. So I have a power supply 24 Volt power supply here that I need to power it up. This RCON EtherCAT motion controller and also to power up my Omron NX102-1020. I also have another cable here. This is an EtherCAT cable connecting from the ether CAT port of the Omron NX102 to the RCON EtherCAT motion controller. I also have an Ethernet cable connect between the NX102, this port right here to my computer. I also have a USB cable connect between my laptop to the USB port of the RCON EtherCAT motion so that I can perform some configuration and what I need also is an Omron Sysmac Studio software and IAI gateway parameter configuration and the robocylinder software.

First and foremost, we need to configure the RCON EtherCAT motion. I already launched the gateway parameter configuration tool. One thing to note on this is you wanna make sure that your port number in the control panel match what you put on here so. What you do is you click on this port config and then this window will come up and make sure that you select the com port that match on your laptop. In my case it's 5, baud rate is 115200 and then you click OK. Because I have only two axis on my IAI EtherCAT motion so I select here two. If I have more than two, I click this arrow key and then select more and then you wanna make sure the RCON EtherCAT motion is in the manual mode and then click change. And that will bring up this menu right here. And you can add more units. You can add editing the units itself, but for now I'm gonna leave the way it is right now. Basically, you click OK and then when you finish what you wanna do next is to click the right key. This window comes up, you click yes to transfer the parameters to the RCON. At this point, what we need to do is to launch the Omron Sysmac Studio so that we can install the ESI file and we can provide you that ESI file. OK so to install it what you want to do is to click on project, select library and show reference. And this is what's going to appear. And so these are all existing ESI in the Sysmac studio. So to install the new file you can either select install file, install folder. And then you want to browse to the folder where you receive the ESI file from us. What you want to do next is click OK. This is the file that you need and then you're going to click yes and it will install it for you. Then what we want to do next is to try to go online with the unit. Then you want to select EtherCAT master which is here. And then right mouse click. This window will come up and select compare and merge. Once you've done that, this is will show up. It will show you what’s the actual EterhCAT network that you have on current setup. So what you see here is they both match. If it doesn't match then what you wanna do is to click this, apply actual network configuration which I recommend to do it. That way make it easy for you. It will automatically transfer what the current setup that it sees over to your project which is on the left side. When you finish that it will show up and under node one with these two iRCON axes. Then what you want to do next is you need to create an axis within the Symac Studio. So you select motion control setup.

Under axis selection right mouse click, select add and select motion control axis. So that's how you add axis into the machine control setup. Once you've done that for the first one, do the same thing to add the second axis. What we need to do is to go into the axis one and then set it up. So that's what we're doing right now we double click on the MC_axis000. When you do that, this window will show up. The first thing is you select the output device 1 and select slot 0 RCON Motion driver and for the very first axis. So when you finish this is how it looked like for the Axis 0. So you do the same thing for the second axis, you select the second axis, double click on it. This will show up. And again you want to select RCON Motion driver MC2. Once you have both axis here you wanna go back to the Axis Zero and define unit as well as the resolution of the encoder and also the pitch in here. So I'm going to select. What I show here is the Axis 0 and you wanna select this icon here so that you can choose the unit. In this case, it's going to be millimeter. And I know the encoder resolution on the actuator, so you wanna select 1048 and the pitch for axis one is 2 millimeter per rev. So you wanna do that. The next thing also you want to select this icon here so that you choose the linear mode because this is an actuator this is a 50 mm stroke. So you want to select linear mode for that. OK. You do the same thing for axis two. OK, select Axis001here. Select this scale. And then choose the unit of millimeter. The resolution is 1048, and look at the picture. This rod cylinder has four millimeter per rev. As far as the pitch.  Same thing here you want to select this icon and select linear mode. Then the next thing we need to do is to install the Function block library. So to do that, you want to select project, select library and show reference. I already install the function block library for RCON EtherCAT motion. But if you have not installed the very first time, what you need to do is to click this plus sign and that will bring up folders and you wanna browse through the folder where you downloaded library for this function block. So here is what I have for my IAI home function block which is you need to have this home function block to be able to home it correctly. OK so you select that and you click open. So here is the function block for the home. To set it up for the axis you basically double click here and type in MC_Axis000, is is actually intellisense feature, so if you just type in it will show up. But then you want to select this for the very first axis you wanna select or type in SUBINDEX001 for the PDO_60FE_01, IAI AxNo would be 0, and I have little contact here that I'm using to execute the home. And it's Home_PDO_Axis1. The MC_Power Enable, this is where you basically enable the servo for that axis.  I just use a tag called svon_aX1_pdo. And MCHomeWithParameter_ExecuteDelay, I have a HomeWDelay as a variable and then on this side I recommend to fill out all of these with the tags so that you can see what's going on if there's any error or whether servo is enabled or not. So I would recommend to for you to fill them all out, so that's the IAI Home Funtion Block.

Like I mentioned before the PLC Open function block for motion controls are available within the Omron Sysmac studio. So all you do is just drag that function block over and this happened to be a Incremental move or MC_Move Relative. So what you want to do is to give an instance for this function block and I made it to be Move_Increment_Ax1 and then define the Axis is MC_Axis000. I have a little contact here to execute this function block whenever I want to make a move incrementally. I have a distance variable tight to this. This basically tells how far the actuator will go. I have a velocity axis one and it's called Axis1_Vel for velocity Axis1_ ACC variable tight to the acceleration, Axis1_ Dec tight to the deceleration. So these are the minimal variables that you need to have here to be able to make this function block works. My recommendation again is to put in all the variables for this function block so that you can monito. This function block again is the PLC open function block for motion control, and it's the MC_ MoveAbsolute, very similar to the move relative function block you specify the axis you have a contact type to execute and then the position how far you want to go, velocity, acceleration, deceleration and so forth. This is showing again. IA Home function block for the second axis you notice here it's now MC_Axis001, and then the IAI_AxNo is 1 because that is the 2nd axis. Again, you do the same thing here. Like the first axis, this is the function block move increment or move relative for the second axis, this is move absolute function block forthe second axis. What I will illustrate next is we're gonna go live with Omron Sysmac studio and see what we can do here. OK, so to go online we have another video how to show you how to do that.  I'm going to go through it. I'm going to go ahead and click this icon to go online. Now I know it's online because of this yellow bar. I'm going to click on this Ethercat so it can show you what we were discussing earlier. So if I click on this Ethercat and I do select the master and do a compare and merge. This is what show up like I showed in the previous presentation. Anyway, I'm going to get out of this motion control set up. Here we go. We already defined these two axes already, but if you click on one of them you see this is where we select the output device and also here's the scale icon where you define the unit as well as the pitch and also the resolution of the encoder. Same thing down here unit. The resolution and the pitch. This icon is basically the select linear model. That's all about the configuration and it's again let’s through the programming side. So what I have here is I have the Axis1 here. I'm already live with the unit as I mentioned before. When you install the library, actually I'm going to show you that also under project under library. And because I'm online so you don't see much show reference, we show that. But once you install that, that function lock is now resided on this side here. So all you do is just select the function block and drag it over project space here. I'm not going to do that because I already create it. I'm going to go ahead and show you how it works. So right now the position is 9.96. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell it to go home. So to do that. So if you look at here I have this power enabled and it turns on and the power status is true as well. So I know my servo is enabled and let me turn it up to show you. So if I turn it off this is off. So this is false. So the servo now is off. False means off. OK, I'm going to enable it again. As soon as I do that, this MC power status will be on, so it shows me hey, my power, my servo is enabled. Yep, it is the next thing I want to do is to turn on this bit so that the actuator will go home or establish the origin. So I'm going to do that and watch this position number right here. It's going home, so now it's at zero. I'm going to turn this off because it's home now. Let's say I wanna do move relative or incremental move. So here is my move relative. I define it the distance to be 10 mmr with the velocity of 10 millimeter per second. Acceleration and deceleration is defined here as well, so I'm going to execute this increment contact. As soon as I do that, it will move 10 millimeter and you will see the actual position here will be at 10 mm.

So I'm going to go ahead and execute that, and here we go. It's moving. Now is our 10. If I turn it off and turn it on it back again, it will move another 10 mmr. Is this incremental move. So now it's at 20. If I wanna do an absolute move. Here's a function block for that and in here I have a distance at 0. Yeah, I can tell it to go to 0, so if I do that this will go to 0. So I'm going to go ahead and execute this. It's going to 0 now if I wanna have it go to 15 mm. I put in 15, tell it to go. So now it's at 15 mm. I have the same thing for the Axis 2 here I'm going to go ahead and this is my home. OK so right now my servo is off right now. It's actually true because I turned it on already from here. OK, which is fine. I know servo is enabled. At this point I can execute a home routine, so I'm going to close this Axis 0 going to open the axis two now, so now it's at 20. I'm going to tell it to go and establish where the home is, so I'm going to execute it. Here we go. So what I'm going to do next is to and again move 10 millimeter. So I have 10 millimeter here. When I have it increment 10 mm. So here we go, it's at 10. I'm going to execute again. It should be a 20 now I'm gonna do it again. It should be a 30 well absolute, same thing. Right now I have it to go to 0 so I'm going to execute this bit here, which execute this function block absolute move. Yep, it goes to zero and I’ going to change it to 25 millimeter and execute this bit. Now it's at 25. So that's how simple it is that you can set up motion within the NX and also IAI RCON EtherCAT motion. Now if you look on this side right as I mentioned before, because it's EtherCAT motion, the IAI is the EtherCAT motion, so you treat it as an axis, so any PLC open motion control function block can be applied. So if I go here and select motion control, all of these function blocks and can be used with the IAI actuator  with the RCON EtherCAT motion. You see Cam in here came out cam monitor and you have gear in gear out. You can also move move linear. Here we go so you can have a linear interpolation there. You can have a circular interpolated move.

As I mentioned, PLC open IEC61131-3 3 for the motion will be easily implemented with the IAI RCON EtherCAT motion.

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