The PLC Powerup Delay allows PLC's that take longer to powerup than the XL does to establish communication with the XL. The XL will wait this amount of time before trying to communicate with the PLC.

We discovered that the upper limit of 60 seconds was not long enough for some PLC's.

The Upper Limit of the PLC Powerup Delay setup parameter was increased from 60 seconds to 255 seconds.

Many of the MODBUS features are initiated or Handshaked by Setting and Clearing Coils(Bits) in the PLC.

In order to improve the troubleshooting capability when features are not working we have added Diagnostics to the XL to show the Coils(Bits), we call them Function Coils, as the XL sees them.

The diagnostics are accessed in the PLC Communications screen by pressing the F3-More Data key until the Screen data heading changes from "Configuration Data" to "Diagnistics. The coils are shown in 8 bit( 1 Byte) groupings. If bit 0 is ON within a group, the group will show a '0' for the first bit. Otherwise, it will show a '-' for the first bit. If bit 7 is ON the group will show '7' for the last bit. Each group has a heading showing the upper and lower coil number within the range. You can determine which coils are ON by adding the individual bit number to the lowest coil number shown in the group header. For example: If the group header is 15-8 and the group shows "-6----1-" then Function Coils 9 and 14 are ON.

In important detail to know about the screen is that it shows the state of the coils as read out of the PLC. If the XL turns on a coil that is imeadiately turned back off by the PLC, that coil will never show up in the screen as ON because it will get cleared before the XL can read it.

If enabled, the current value of the Remote Run Velocity Speed Pot is now shown in the PLC Communication Diagnostic Screen. If not Enabled, the value will show as "Disabled".

Retract After cut was already enabled on Open Loop XL270 and XL266 controllers.

The retract after cut feature will now be anabled on any Open Loop controller that is configured for a Feed-to-Stop Shear with no Gag outputs defined. Gag outputs are not allowed because they can be combined with a shear operation and would prevent the retract feature from functioning, possibly causing damage to the machine in the process.

If the Retract After Cut feature is used on a machine with multiple presses the controller waits for all other press operations to complete prior to beginning the retract. After the retract is complete, the shear up input is turned on. After the Shear Up Dwell expired the Shear Up output is turned off and the material begins to feed again.

There was a bug when a Shear coincided with a Punch operation. The controller was attempting to return the material back to its original position prior to beginning the next feed. The controller has arbitration code that determins which press task is responsible for moving the material. The press that has the closest target is responsible for the move.

When the shear press was returing itself back to its original position after the retract, the move was interfering with the move arbitration code. This was resolved by allowing the controller to begin its next feed from the retracted position rather than returning itself to the original location first.

This change has no effect on a Manual Shear. A Manual Shear still returns itslf to the original location. This return prevents multiple manual shears from causing the material to retract completely out of the shear press.

Threading or unthreading a coil should cancel an Auto Crop but niether condition was doing so.

On lines that cannot shear while the material is stationary, a special scrap piece is added to the queue to do what is called an AutoCrop. When the controller goes into run and the material starts moving it will do a shear to start the leading edge of the first part.

Many times this part is not long enough or they do not want it to go through the roll-former. In this case the operator has to remember to halt the line after the AutoCrop cut occurs.

A new setup parameter called Halt After Auto Crop has been added. It has two possible settings, YES and NO. When set to yes the controller will automatically halt after the Auto Crop has been completed.

This setup is by default locked with the setup lockout. It can be added to configurations. It is part of the Run Mode Options group. It is active and visible anytime the Auto Crop Length parameter is active and visible.

The Coil Trim Cut Distance setup parameter automatically adds a scrap piece, equal to the non-zero programed length, to the queue, after a new coil has been loaded. This scrap piece serves to do the leading edge cut for the first part and allows the controller to run parts as the material is being threaded through the presses to reach the shear press. This potentially allows nearly all of the material threaded into the machine to be used. Without this feature some lines would waste many feet of material before they could produce the first part from a coil.

This trim cut can be very short and may require an operator to remove it so that it does not jam up a down-stream roll-former.This feature remember to halt the line for them.

A new setup parameter called Halt After Coil Trim Cut has been added. It has two possible settings, YES and NO. When set to YES the controller will automatically halt after the Coil Trim Cut has been completed.

This setup is by default locked with the setup lockout. It can be added to configurations. It is part of the Run Mode Options group. It is active and visible anytime the Coil Trim Cut Distance parameter is active and visible.

A manual shear will now cancel any Coil Trim Cut that has been initiated but not Queued. Once a Coil Trim Cut is in the Queue, traditional Queue handling methods apply.

Prior to this change, once a Coil Trim Cut had been added to the Queue, the indication that a Coil Trim Cut is required got cleared. Unfortunately, on a shear only line, this behavior resulted in missing Coil Trim Cuts.

Shear only controllers do not maintain their queue when they exit the run mode. This opened up a hole in the logic. If a Coil Trim Cut was required but the controller exited the run mode prior to executing the cut, the Coil Trim Cut operation got lost.

The software has now been modified to only clear the indication that a Coil Trim Cut is required when a cut actually takes place.