Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The upper bending beam home limit was added so it could be used as a reality check for the 5226 controller if the feedback of the upper bending is no longer valid. This will stop the controller from moving other axes that could cause harm to the machine if the beam is not at its home position regardless of where the feedback is saying the beam is at.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The hydraulic units we are using going forward have test ports that give the pressure at a given axis if the sensors are connected. Axis Pressure Test Ports A and B were added as axes in the 5226 controller to get this feedback so it could be seen in diagnostics.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The bending beam and retract home limits were previously checked on a polled basis. They were changed to interrupts to try and see the transition from off to on as quickly as possible so that other axes could start moving.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The 5226 controller uses axis conflict tests to decide when its safe for an axis to move based on certain parameters set by the user. Previously there were only parameters for the maximum angle the bending beams could be at to move the retracts. To have as much safety as possible for the machine parameters 240 Max Lower Retract Position to Move Lower Bending Beam and 288 Max Upper Retract Position to Move Upper Bending Beam were added. Having these parameters give more flexibility to the user for when it is safe to move the bending beams.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The target position of the backgauge can change if the main backstop is not the backstop that is going to be used for that operation. This can mean a finger or closed grippers used for gauging. In these cases the backgauge needs to be offset to account for the length of the finger or grippers when closed. There was a bug where the target direction was being decided by the original target instead of the offset position of where the backgauge is actually moving to.

The solution was to make sure the new target that was calculated is used for deciding target direction for that move.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

If a machine has too much I/O, feedback, etc. a second 5226 controller will be added to accommodate the extra devices. To do this the main controller will talk to the added controller though CAN bus to find out what all of the sensors connected to the second controller are doing. The problem is that the master controller is the only one communicating with Pathfinder so it has to configure the slave controller what port is being used for what. A bug came from this in which the master controller was only setting up one of the four analog input ports. This means that anything plugged into the other three ports would be ignored.

The solution to this problem was to make sure that all analog input ports are configured so that the slave controller can relay the information to the master controller board.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

A hemmer is an add-on to a machine that is similar to a shear in the way that it moves across the machine except instead of cutting the material it creates a hem. The 5226 does not have a dedicated hemmer operation though so the idea was to use the shear operation to move the hemmer across the machine. The one problem that came from this though is that the shear comes back right away since the material has been cut. With the hemmer though the customer wants to remove the material so that the hemmer does not come back over the created hem.

The solution was to add a generic parameter that can be set to let the controller know there is a hemmer on the machine instead of a shear. Knowing this allows the controller to use the shear operation, but in a slightly different way. The logic with Hemmer Active is that once the hemmer gets to the end of the machine the controller will stop the hemmer and leave it there. The user can then press a pedal to raise the clamp and get the material out of the way. Another pedal press will make the hemmer return to its home position.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

In open loop control the controller will use the slow distance parameter to transition into slow to be able to make a more controlled stop and the reaction distance to coast into a full stop. The problem is that there is only one dedicated parameter for both the slow and reaction distance parameters for the backgauge. Meaning both forward and reverse movement will use the same parameters to stop. This can be a problem if each direction reacts differently when stopping.

The solution to this problem was to give dedicated slow and reaction distance directional parameters for the backgauge. Now the user can tune the machine for both forward and reverse moves.