Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

There was a bug in the communication between the 5226 controller and the Indra Drive CS where the controller was able to send a command before the drive was done processing the previous command. This caused the communication to get into a stalled state where the drive was sitting there waiting for a command and the controller was sitting there because it already sent the command.

The fix to this was found when looking at available status bits the drive sends back through implicit messaging. One of them was Command Value Acknowledgment which can tell the controller that it received the message. The controller was then set up to use this status to check before sending another command.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

When not engaged some proportional valves can leak that can cause unexpected results compared to what should happen. One way to remedy this problem is to give a voltage when enable valve is off. To accomplish this the parameter Idle Output Value was created. This value is the amount of voltage that will be sent to the valve when not being used. So when an axis is not being moved it will be getting a signal from -10 - 10 V based on the parameter and will not be enabled. This can also help with keeping system pressure from dropping at a high rate.

The Idle Output Delay logic was also added in conjunction with the Idle Output parameter because it was found that after a move the valve was not fully closing quick enough before the Idle Output voltage was being sent to the valve. This caused additional movement even without the enable signal. The logic is that once an axis is done moving and in its idle state the controller will wait 50ms before sending the voltage signal.

Change made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

A velocity multiplier feature was implemented on 5226 controllers to help certain machines make smoother moves. This works by having an additional number associated with a certain range in the calibration table that will be used to multiply the analog control signal when the axis is moving in that position range. This allows the user to have more control over the entire range of movement since they can adjust certain ranges accordingly. A cutoff was put in though that if the adjusted velocity is lower than the slow speed, but the original velocity is supposed to be bigger than slow speed don't take the adjustment and set it to slow. This is fine for open loop, but not for closed loop. This forced adjustment will throw off the loop and cause erratic movement.

The solution to this problem was to not force the velocity to be slow speed in this situation when the axis is setup as closed loop.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

The 5226 has a section of magnetic memory that can save information even when the controller is powered off. The referenced status of an axis is one of these things. There is a problem though where if somebody chooses the wrong machine type in Pathfinder in which the axis on the machine has an incremental encoder and talks to the controller the referenced status could be cleared. If the correct machine type is chosen in which the axis has an absolute encoder then Pathfinder will be stuck in a needs reference state because there is no way to reference that axis on the machine. The only solution right now is to create a special build that will clear that section of magnetic memory and have it re-initialize with the correct machine type. The bug though is that the special fix was checked-in and released. This caused the reference status of axes with incremental encoders to lose their reference every power cycle because it was being re-initialized at start up.

The fix to this bug was to remove the special build changes from this release.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

In a closed loop system the motion of an axis is based on calculated set points of where it should be in real life. If the real life feedback is not matching up with the set point positions then the control will be adjusted with a PID system to try and match the actual position with the set points. Before when the final calculation for the adjustment the proportional part was just part of the final calculation and not put into a variable. Therefore a variable was created to save the proportional calculation so it could be used for diagnostics and proportional gain timing adjustments.

Changes made for Pathfinder 5226 controllers.

In a closed loop system the motion of an axis is based on calculated set points of where it should be in real life. If the real life feedback is not matching up with the set point positions then the control will be adjusted with a PID system to try and match the actual position with the set points. Factors like friction, gravity or physical limitations can all cause the closed loop system to adjust the analog accordingly. Another feature we have that adjusts the signal is the velocity table which is created to multiply the analog signal based on where it is in the travel. To utilize this feature even more each calculation of the PID is multiplied by this table before the final calculation. This allows the loop to have each component of the PID to have an adjustment based on where the axis is in travel.