The Clear Queue After setting, if active, determines when the part queue gets cleared. A new option, called Prompt, allows the user to have more control over when the queue gets cleared due to Manual Shear operations. When this option is selected, after two manual shears, the operator will be presented with a user prompt window that has two available options. The user may opt to preserve the Queue or to Clear the Queue.

This new window must be cleared before entering the run mode, but they will still be able to do additional manual shears or jog the material.

The new option becomes the default option. We don't expect this to impact existing installations for two reasons. Existing installs will have Eclipse, which will restore their prior setting, or they will have a hard copy of their settings and they will restore their prior setting.

If the controller does not have the Clear Queue After setting, they will not experience any difference.

Rather than deleting memory records immediately the controller has a mechanism to mark records for deletion and then actually delete them when it is safe to do so. The controller also can manage arrays of record chains.

A bug has been discovered when deleting marked records in an array of record chains when the chain is not the first element of the array. The code failed to update the proper array element. This has not been discovered until now because deleting marked records has never been done on any array with more than one element until now.

This issue has now been resolved.

Prior to this change Queue records were being deleted in high priority tasks, higher priority than the Input task.

There was a report of the Input Task Watch Dog timer interrupt occurring while a press task was deleting a queue record. Deleting record(s) can be time consuming. If multiple press tasks need to delete them at the same time it could potentially cause problems. It is a much better use of CPU time to mark them to be deleted and then delete them in a lower priority task when there is an abundance of CPU time available. That is what this change does.

Rather than Clearing the Queue we have added an option to Prune the Queue. This option allows the operator to remove parts at the end of the queue that have not been started yet and attempt to complete the half-finished parts that are still in the queue.

Any part who's shear operation is beyond the furthest tool will be removed from the queue. The Front Shear Tool, if configured, is not allowed to be the furthest tool.

To prevent negative targets, scrap may need to be added to begin queueing parts again. The Scrap Part Length and the Scrap Part Mode are used to determine how much scrap to add, how many parts and if negative targets are removed.

This new option is not enabled on a Tile Machine controller.

A new MODBUS level, 125, has been added. It allows the Item User fields 3 and 4 to be sent to the PLC.

Added the 'Never' option to the Allow Coil Override setup. This was an initiated request by a customer that Eclipse be able to prevent coil overrides, even my managers with access to the Setup Lockout key. Any attempt to override or edit the material of a coil will result in an error message explaining why it is not allowed.

Coil overrides or edits to the material of a coil will not be allowed if the setting is set to 'Never'. Eclipse is intended to be the authority of when a coil override is allowed. The only overrides of a coil will be those that have been pre-configured by Eclipse. Overrides at the controller are no longer allowed.

It is assumed that this option will be selected and locked out by Eclipse. It is also assumed that Eclipse and the controller will be configured with Coil Validation enabled so that the material field of a coil will always be accurate and never need correcting or adjustment at the machine.

In SCN-4724 the method of testing if a press cycle was active needed adjustment for an MHA Die that contained multiple presses.

The same edits needed to be made for a standard Die Accelerator for the same case. However, the results(Symptoms) of the bug would be different and much rarer. They would only show up under the rare condition that a press would be active, and the material would be moving backwards for some reason. This condition is very unlikely, but it is covered.

The Controller already has the capability of allowing a PLC to select a Setup Configuration through the MODBUS interface. However, it does not have control over when the request to load it is made.

Prior to this change the controller would read the desired Setup Configuration ID from the PLC when entering certain run modes. However, this was too late in some cases, for example concerning Setups that need to change between and before a coil change.

A function coil has now been defined that will trigger the controller to read the desired Setup Configuration ID from the PLC and attempt to load the specified configuration. The Setup Configurations and Setups must not be locked out by Eclipse, the Configuration with the specified ID must exist and the controller Run Mode must be HALTED. If the first attempt fails and error message will be displayed. The controller will continue to retry periodically but not display any more errors unless the controller attempts to enter the run mode and the configuration is still unable to load.

Details on the Function Coil are described in the XL200 PLC Interface document.