Hello community, I have a problem, I have a team with an APC 910, no one had worked with this type of control before in the company, lately we have had problems with the cell that controls, but we have no idea with what software we can monitor the program or How can we see the logic of the cell. My intention is only to be able to address the alarms and control problems that arise, your support and guidance would be very useful to me.
The main problem is that it communicates by protocol with a Fanuc robot control and I am losing the hold signal at a certain point, what interests me is being able to see what is causing this to happen.
Hello and welcome !
An APC910 is an industrial PC which can run our “AR embedded” which turns the PC into a PLC (either with native Automation runtime or with Windows/Linux as operating system where our AR is then also the PLC)
In order to monitor the application running you can use Automation Studio
Automation Studio V4.12 | B&R Industrial Automation (br-automation.com)
You can download this software and install it “for free” but you will need a licence in order to operate this software. You can request a 30 day trial licence and test our software.
Although it is a trial licence the software is not limited to any function
Automation Studio Licensing | B&R Industrial Automation (br-automation.com)
After installing this you can go “online” to the PLC and compare the software of your project to the one on the PLC:
On any task on the PLC you can then open the “watch” and monitor values
Nevertheless if you do not have the original project and no knowledge about the project running on the PLC the plain values and probably even the names of the variables might not mean much to you.
In order to see the logic itself you always need to have the original project from your machine manufacturer
Hope that helps a bit
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Thank You Oliver,
Your answer helps me a lot, that is the first time I work with this product, The problem now is just the OEM didn’t left a Backup of the project, I don’t think the problem is the APC program, maybe could be something wrong in the cell that cause the fault, the cell runs without problems for more than 2 years so if there is a problem surely we would have noticed it before. There is any manuals for programmers about automation studio and how the APC is setup?.
One last thing, there is a way to backup the APC that I can perform? We don’t know what to do in case any of the devices break down and have to be replaced, I see a Compact flash inserted in the APC but i dont know if there is all the program information there or if is in the HDD or SSD of the APC.
Again, thank you very much for the support, I am outside my field of knowledge.
Hello @emiliopego2014
When installing Automation Studio it comes with the Automation help.
It is basically the same as the online help:
B&R Online Help (br-automation.com)
It will give an overview of Automation Studio but also the possibilties about programming and functions to monitor your PLC
Regarding your APC there are two possibilities:
- it is a so called plain “Arembedded” - this means no Windows or Linux is running and in this case the CFast is the only source where the application is stored. When the APC is without power cou can remove this CFast and use an image tool (we recommend “HDClone”) to create an image as backup. This image will contian all of the application and settings for your APC but it will NOT contain the variables values as this might be stored within the APCs SRAM (if available)
- the APC is used as so called “Hypervisor”. This basically means that Windows or Linux is running and our ARembedded is running in parallel. Still the CFast can be cloned and the same rule for the image applies as for a plain ARembedded
Nevertheless my previous answer still applies. If you do not have the original project for you APC you will have a hard time searching for the machine fault.
When loosing a signal over any fieldbus (the connection to your robot) I would start searching for a hardware fault first as software does not get “bad” over time. Probably it is only a loose cable or a damaged cable between PLC and robot
