The MHA Die Accelerators allowed additional material motion after the cut while the die was returning home. After a stationary cut, the material is supposed to stay stationary after the cut if a halt is required. This has been resolved.

When the software was modified to support stopping presses and standard Die Accelerators, Die Accelerators were modified to wait and do stationary press hits when a stopping target caused the DA target to be within the die range.

This same change was not implemented for Multi-Hit Die Accelerators (MHA and MHA2). This has now been rectified.

Stopping targets and stationary Die Accelerator targets that can be fired at the same time will now do so rather than be fired seqeuntially as has been done in the past.

This issue is possible due to SCN 4655 - XL2CL; Position the Die early when delaying for a stationary shear or punch.

On the first part after a Queue clear, SCN 4655 can cause the die to rapidly pre-position itself for a stationary target that results in the die out running the leading edge of the material. When this happens, the material drops out of the die, which can cause a jam up when the material catches back up to the die.

The software was changed to test if the resulting die position places the die beyond the current location of the material leading edge. If it does, the pre-positioning is disabled and the die will wait for the material to stop before it is positioned for the stationary target.

We have added a selection for the Keyence MK-G1000 part printer. This and the Keyence MK-U6000 printer selection select the exact same driver behind the scenes. The new selection makes it clear that the MK-G1000 printer is supported and avoids the confusion of having to select a driver that does not match the printer model.

The Closed Loop Feed to Stop controllers have a Slow Run input to help reduce Scrap when threading a new coil. It also helps for Material pit control.

Up until this point Open Loop controllers or controllers that have Open Loop Material motion control have handled with these things with external logic. However, if the material speed is controlled using the Analog feature of the controller, external logic is not sufficient.

This change adds an extended IO input (MODBUS) on input 52 or 50 for Open Loop Slow Run control. If the controller has Open Loop Material motion control, this input will be available.

HVAC Controllers use input 50.

All other controllers use input 52.

The Coast Mode Timeout setting was added for lines that take longer than the 3 second value that was hard coded at the time. It was only really intended to be left alone or used to compensate for lines that have longer coast times.

Customers have felt the need to adjust it down to the minimum of 1 second. This can create Missed Target scenarios where targets could have been hit wile coasting but were limited by the shortened coast time.

The Minimum Limit on this setting has now been changed to the default setting of 3 seconds.

The Command Velocity Filter was added for a specific customer who claimed that earlier versions of software performed better on their system.

We were looking for any differences between the "good" version and the latest. One difference was due to a bug that was fixed. The command velocity was being filtered using hard coded constants that did not get adjusted properly when the loop time changed for SERCOS. By adding the Setup, they were able to use the same filtering as was being used prior to fixing the bug.

The default filter rate is 35.8Hz. The effective rate with SERCOS prior to fixing the bug was 17.8Hz.

Recently a different customer was having trouble and we discovered that they had set the filter rate to 1hz. This caused their Die Accelerator to be way behind as it was accelerating. For this reason, we are raising the Lower Limit to something that still allows some adjustment below the default but limits it to a more reasonable range.

The Lower Limit of the Command Velocity Filter is now 10Hz rather than 1Hz.

This SCN, at a high level, documents a new feature that is mostly complete in the software but not yet enabled.

Prior to this change customers who welded coils together were not able to track individual coil production because a coil change required the machine to halt, and it cleared the queue on a coil change. This behavior negates many of the reasons customers choose to weld coils in the first place. There was also no way to sense the transition from one coil to another.

This feature allows coils to be welded, pre-loaded into a coil queue, pre-validated by Eclipse and then switch coils on the fly without having to halt between coils or clearing the queue between coils. This change also allows production and coil usage be tracked under the same conditions.

More details will follow when the feature is enabled and available for use.

As we add new features, sometimes they require new inputs that need to reside locally on the XL rather than a MODBUS extended input. Examples being when one of the hole detect capable inputs are needed for accuracy. On some controllers this is only possible if an existing input is moved or removed.

Inputs that execute manual operations, like Manual Stacker, have less stringent timing requirements. They can be initiated with on screen push buttons. A new window has been added to the XL200 controllers for Manual Operations. The first manual operation that has been added to it is a Manual Stacker button.

An On-Screen Push button may not be convenient enough for some applications. In that case, MODBUS extended inputs can also be added, as is the case with the Manual Stacker input. If MODBUS is enabled and the Manual Stacker input has been removed from the XL, it will be available via MODBUS in one of the extended inputs.

On a Coil tail-out the tailed coil must be classified as Completely Used, Returned to Inventory or Not Unloaded. There is an Unload Coil Window that requires this classification to occur.

The software was not accounting for the possibility that an operator may turn power off to the machine while the Unload Coil screen is active. The window is displayed as soon as the coil tails out. It is very possible, near the end of a shift, that there may be no more production for the day and the machine gets turned off before threading the next coil. Because the tailed Coil was not classified, it is still considered the current coil. When the new coil is threaded, the software has no reason to prompt for a new coil. All the new coil’s production was getting attributed to the tailed coil.

The result of this scenario is the tailed coil gets double production tracked to it and the new coil gets none. The customers inventory still believes it has the new coil available for use.

To fix this issue, the state of tail-out will now be remembered throughout a power cycle. The Unload Coil screen will be presented after the power-up, requiring the tailed coil to be classified.

When selecting a driver, the RS232 Baud rate is displayed as a read only setup parameter to help in configuring the printer. The 19200 Baud rate is mistakenly displayed as 14400. This has been resolved.

Any window that requires attention from an operator is going to be a Modal Window. A status bit has been added to the Flags in the UART Status Sub-Command to indicate anytime a Modal Window is open.

The intended use for this is to notify a PC application anytime the XL controller needs attention. This allows the XL user interface to be buried and accessible through a KVM Window Application on a PC. In theory this allows an XL to be installed on a system where its only access to the XL display and keyboard is through a KVM interface window. A monitoring application can monitor the status bit and indicate on the computer screen that the XL requires attention.

This bit becomes available with Eclipse UART version 3.61 and higher.