When machine is plugged into the ewon, the machine starts having weird faults that happen when the machine is running. When connection to the ewon is unplugged, the weird faults stop. We have checked the cabling to make sure nothing is shorted, crossed or damaged. Do you have any ideas as to why or how an ewon could start causing the machine to have random faults when connected?
Could be a potential IP conflict.
Other than that, I would need more info about the machine and what type of faults are happening. What is the model, what protocols are used, what does the specific fault say?
Also, is there an IO Server activated on the Flexy?
How is the Flexy used? Just for remote access or also for tags or alarms,etc.?
How are the devices connected? What else is connected to the Flexy?
Can’t make much of a determination without much more information.
We are using the Flexy exclusively for data collection on the WAN side. We are polling from an Allen-Bradley PLC. There are no error messages in the Ewon’s event log. Customer says that parts of the machine seem to get out of time and start jamming up when the ewon is plugged in.
What type of internet connection (Ethernet, WiFi, cellular)?
Is anything else connected to the Flexy or just that one PLC?
Can they give us remote access to the Ewon to check the settings and run some tests? They either could give us a call and we could connect through Teamviewer or they could create a temporary account for us in eCatcher. It’s hard to speculate how the Flexy could be causing this. I have never seen anything like this happen before, other than if they were causing an IP conflict and that would be generating errors in the logs.
Our client thinks they found the issue with the bag machine. There seems to be an issue with the time sync and the grand master clock settings.
When the bag machine is connected to the ewon, the bag machine, and both gasket machines are interconnecting. When the bag machine is plugged in to the ewon, it changes to the time sync slave. When I unplug it from the ewon, the bag machine plc becomes the Grand Master Clock. The plc controllers in the gasket machines are taking priority and overriding the bag machine plc and becoming the Grand Master Clock that the bag machine tries to follow. I asked about changing from an unmanaged switch to a managed switch and this could possibly help but was told by Rockwell Automation that it would still not eliminate the problem altogether.
Can this linking of the gasket machines to the bag machine via the ewon be corrected? They are not having that issue elsewhere in the plant where we have multiple pieces of equipment connected to the ewon.
Can you diagram how these devices are connected when working and when not working? Like, are they still connected to each other when they aren’t connect to the Ewon?
It doesn’t sound like it’s anything specific that the Ewon is doing, more like what else they are connected to when connected to the Ewon, if you get what I mean. Probably another device interfering. The Ewon is just acting as a simple switch on the LAN, like if you were to connect to any other Layer 2 switch. It shouldn’t be affecting the timing protocol, which runs on a higher layer.
There are three machines connected to a single ewon. There is no connection between the machines otherwise. Our client confirmed that when the bag machine is connected to the ewon, the master clock in the bag machine changed to a slave and looks at the gasket machines as the master clock. When they unplug the bag machine it reverts back to looking at its own clock as the master.
They could change the priority of the settings in all the plc’s but then the gasket machines would start looking toward the bag machine plc as the master clock. The ewons on the other machines are not doing that.
Please advise if separate Ewon for bag machine will resolve this issue.
It sounds like it would, but I don’t know how this bag machine works. If it works when it’s connected to the Ewon by itself, then I would suspect it would work if you put the bag machine on it’s own Ewon and the gasket machines on their own Ewon.
It sounds like this is a question of what happens when putting the bag machine on the same network with the gasket machines, whether you are using an Ewon or any other layer 2 switch, so we wouldn’t be the appropriate company to answer the question. The manufacturer of these machines should be able to tell you how their products operate much better than we can.
What I can tell you is that if you connect the machines to Ewon’s LAN they will be on the same physical network. In order to reach them through the Ewon’s WAN or through the VPN (ecatcher or m2web), they will need to be addressed for the same network.
If you put them on separate Ewons, than they won’t be on the same physical network so they won’t communicate with each other no matter how they are addressed.
From what you’ve told me, it sounds like that should solve the problem, but I can’t make any guarantees as I’m not familiar with how these machines work.