PTO Move Status message and Success bit peculiarity

[Maninashed]

Hi All,

I am successfully executing PTO Move instructions. I am confident that the movement is happening correctly - I can see the motor and the attached mechanical components moving, I can see acceleration, I can see deceleration and the mechanical assembly moves the correct distance. The movements are quite long - approximately 5 to 10 seconds.

At the same time I am examining the Status Message and Status Bit outputs from the PTO Move instruction in 2 places:

1.    Within Visilogic using the online test functionality

2.    Using variables displayed on the HMI screen

During the movement I am observing values for the 2 output variables of: Status message=0 "Idle/OK" and Success=1. These values do not change before, during or after the movements, even though the movements are of many seconds duration.

The help file and the software manual show that the expected Status message is 5 "Currently in motion".

Is it correct that I am seeing Status message=0 and Success=1 during movements?

If it is indeed the case that a successful movement does not cause either of the PTO Move instruction output variables to change as I believe I am observing, then am I correct in assuming that neither of these variables provide the means for determining whether a movement is in progress?

Thanks in advance.

[Maninashed]

Forgot the important bit:

The PLC is a V430-J-TR34

[Maninashed]

Anybody with any knowledge?

[kratmel]

I will add some thoughts on your question.

You did not specify the version of the Visilogic you are using. If this is the latest version then I recommend repeating your experiments in version 9.8.65 for the test.

Another thing to keep in mind is the low speed of data exchange between the Visilogic program and the PLC. It is possible that in the process of movement PLC puts successive steps of movement and performs them. That is, state 5 of motion occurs but you cannot see it because the PLC is constantly generating the next point and moving to it. Try to add to the program immediately after the movement command the trigger that is set forever if state = 5 and you can see if it occurs or not.

I also assume we have a bug in the Visilogic program and you found it. And then this question needs to be sent to support@unitronics.com

[Maninashed]

Thanks for your input Kratmel.

I'm using version 9.8.95 Build 0 which I think may be the latest.

Interesting point about the successive steps of movement and the idea of latching the state=5 condition. I'll give it a try and report back. In the meantime I'm awaiting a response from Unitronics tech support - I opened a support ticket yesterday.

Thanks again and best regards.