A Three Axis Gantry Robot controlled by Siemens S7-PLCSIM Advanced
| Infobox | |
|---|---|
| Level | Beginner |
| Duration | approx. 30 minutes |
| Prerequisites | - The three axis gantry robot twin project (Gantry Robot Tutorial) or use the configured project GantryRobot_final_20220926.zip which you can find in the downloaded files. - PLCSim Advanced - TIA Portal V16 |
In this tutorial you will learn how to connect an external PLC to the simulation software twin. With a practical but yet simple application, you will learn how to control a digital twin with a PLC. Together we will
- check out the prepared PLC program to roughly understand how it works
- adapt the existing gantry robot project and add new sensors and control buttons to the machine
- create a PLC instance with S7-PLCSIM Advanced and load the prepared PLC project
- create a file with datapoint definitions
- establish a connection to the PLC with twin
- make sensor and actor connections and run the machine
The adapted three axis portal robot is fully controlled by the PLC. If start is pressed within a control panel the robot references automatically with the help of sensors and picks boxes from position A and stack them on position B. The final machine will look like this:
Note
Please note that this is a very basic tutorial. We will not use the whole range of functionality and we will make some simplifications which would make no sense in a real project. Nevertheless you will learn how easily you can create very complex machines with twin.
Next
The tutorial starts in the next chapter.