About SpoonMan

So far I am able to issue 3000 moves to two separate kinematics using the contour command. I start the contour command in one step, issue the moves in another, then start the moves in a third step by setting the contour command = false.          There were 3 issues that took a while to figure out.    1: You need to increase the move buffer:     2: If you issue the commands in a FOR LOOP, my PLC task would "time out" because it is trying to crunch 3000 commands before my 2ms motion task would complete. I did this because i thought the commands had to be executed in the same scan... this is not the way to do this...So instead i just stepped through commands one PLC scan at a time, then started motion with the Contour command = False.    3: During the execution of the 3000 moves, the axes would stop at each individual target position... which is not what I wanted. What i really wanted is to have continuous velocity throughout the move profile. I used the ContinuousMotion command and even the KinPolyTrans command but i still had stopping at each point... It turns out that you need to set the "reserve accel and jerk" to a non zero value in order for the motion kernel to be able to stitch the moves together without stopping. After I changed them to the following values, i achieved smooth continuous velocity in my motion profile.    Unfortunately you don't see the 'reserve acc/jerk" in the kinematic properties in the CtrlX Motion App webpage, you need to set these values in the datalayer... Not user friendly in my opinion.        Having said, the CtrlX Motion Documentation DOES mention this in a few places, its just not very obvious what the impact of these parameters are. It would be best to have them as a part of the CtrlX Motion webpage with all the other limit values that you normally find (like the move buffer, velocity limits, etc). ... View more

Hi Andrew, I would look into the IL_ECATSoeCommand function block that should be in your ethercat master library of CtrlX PLC Engineering. From there you can issue most any drive command, in this particular case, it looks to be associated with parameter/IDN P-0-0542 Be aware that you will likely have to issue a brake "apply" command afterward to close the brake again. Also be aware for Indradrive, i think you have to set a parameter to allow for external brake control. I don't see that checkbox on a CtrlX drive so perhaps they removed that requirement for this generation of drives.  Below a link to a write up where they go into detail on using the SOE command and SOE read/write function blocks to similar things: https://developer.community.boschrexroth.com/t5/Store-and-How-to/Ethercat-SoE-Read-and-write-ctrlX-DRIVE-and-or-Indradrive/ba-p/71212 ... View more