RMA
Member
I've got two questions here, but since they're pretty closely related, I reckon they might as well be in the same Thread. Although I'm using ProTool Pro, I reckon most HMI S/W nowadays offers pretty much the same funcionality so general suggestions from users of other HMI S/W are most welcome.
The motor-driven switches that we are using in this project are usually used in power stations and the like and as a rule may only be actually switched once or twice a year. We may be switching some of the switches twenty, thirty or more times per day, so they are obviously going to need some maintenance. Exactly what maintenance they are going to need is going be a learning on the job experience, because even the manufacturer can't gives any ideas in this application. From tests that we've done we reckon that greasing of the contacts is going to be necessary every 500 or so switching cycles. The motors will be pretty well clapped out and needing replacement somewhere round about 5000 cycles (or less). Somewhere along the line we reckon the contacts will also need to be replaced, but unfortunatly when they did the lifetests on the switch, nobody thought to check this out!
The general opinion among all concerned is that most people would prefer a counter system that would indicate when particular maintenance is necessary, presumably by a colour change, but that the counter concerned should only be reset to zero after the switch has been completely overhauled and is effectively "as new". Colour changing according to count status is basically no problem, e.g. 0 - 400 = green, 400 - 500 = orange and over 500 = red. What's a bit more of a problem - and I don't think it's directly do-able in ProTool - is how to go back to green after the service is performed at say, 460 cycles?
The other problem I've got is that I want a message to appear on the login screen if any of the switches is in the phase where maintenance is due in the near future, which forces them to jump to the maintenace screen to check out the state of things before returning to the logon screen with the logon button now visible. However, I only want this to happen once per logon. I initially thought I could do this by monitoring the password level, but unfortunately, it doesn't get reset to zero when the password times out.
If anybody's got any suggestions of how to handle these situations, I'd be glad to hear them. If you need any more info, just ask, I didn't want to overload the first post more than absolutely necessary.
The motor-driven switches that we are using in this project are usually used in power stations and the like and as a rule may only be actually switched once or twice a year. We may be switching some of the switches twenty, thirty or more times per day, so they are obviously going to need some maintenance. Exactly what maintenance they are going to need is going be a learning on the job experience, because even the manufacturer can't gives any ideas in this application. From tests that we've done we reckon that greasing of the contacts is going to be necessary every 500 or so switching cycles. The motors will be pretty well clapped out and needing replacement somewhere round about 5000 cycles (or less). Somewhere along the line we reckon the contacts will also need to be replaced, but unfortunatly when they did the lifetests on the switch, nobody thought to check this out!
The general opinion among all concerned is that most people would prefer a counter system that would indicate when particular maintenance is necessary, presumably by a colour change, but that the counter concerned should only be reset to zero after the switch has been completely overhauled and is effectively "as new". Colour changing according to count status is basically no problem, e.g. 0 - 400 = green, 400 - 500 = orange and over 500 = red. What's a bit more of a problem - and I don't think it's directly do-able in ProTool - is how to go back to green after the service is performed at say, 460 cycles?
The other problem I've got is that I want a message to appear on the login screen if any of the switches is in the phase where maintenance is due in the near future, which forces them to jump to the maintenace screen to check out the state of things before returning to the logon screen with the logon button now visible. However, I only want this to happen once per logon. I initially thought I could do this by monitoring the password level, but unfortunately, it doesn't get reset to zero when the password times out.
If anybody's got any suggestions of how to handle these situations, I'd be glad to hear them. If you need any more info, just ask, I didn't want to overload the first post more than absolutely necessary.