Controls Meeting 3-May-2012

From GlueXWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Agenda

  • Announcements
  • Minutes from previous meeting 19-Apr-2012
  • Stepper motor control - Vanik
  • EPICS - Hovanes, Vanik
    • alarm system, goniometer, UConn boards, other power supplies, etc.
  • Counting house installation - Hovanes, Mark
  • Solenoid_Controls_Redesign - Mark, Josh, Scot, Yi, Elliott
    • FMEA
    • UPS power to Danfysik, SOE, QD, overcurrent protection, ground fault detector, etc.
  • JInventory database - Elliott
  • Test stand - Hovanes, Josh
  • PLC programming and PXI system - Josh
  • Elogs and databases - Elliott
  • Mantis task tracker
  • Experiment Control Supervisor - Elliott


Time/Location

9:30 AM Thurs 3-May-2012 CC L207


Announcements

Next Meeting

9:30am 17-May-2012 CC L207


Minutes

Present: Elliott W, Mark S, Josh B, Hovanes E, Vanik K.


Vanik's presentation on stepper motor control took up most of the meeting (pptx and live demo). Afterwards we had brief status reports and discussions on selected topics.


Stepper Motor Control

See Vanik's slides (link above) for many details.

The XPS controller has many sophisticated features and can control a great variety of motors. It can also simultaneously control multiple motors (max eight) to create complicated trajectories. We do not need any of its fancy features and will just use it to control a single axis at a time. Vanik has ported an XPS EPICS driver from the APS (Mark Rivers) and developed CSS gui's to control it. He has successfully performed many of the operations needed in Hall D, including recovery after power loss, resetting to home, and moving to a specific location. He needs to get a motor with an encoder to test the remaining features (we hope to borrow one from Hall B). He also needs to read the stage position using external hardware in order to implement Harp scans, which involve coordination between the controller and an external DAQ system.

If this is successful the XPS controller should satisfy all motor controller needs for Hall D, and we won't need a VME-based system to do Harp scans. Hovanes thinks we need one XPS in Hall D and two in the Tagger Hall (already need 8 channels in the Tagger Hall and more may be coming), and perhaps another in the Rack Room for testing and as a spare. They cost about $8k for the controller mainframe plus $500 each for i/o cards (max eight). See Vanik's note for a list of applications in Hall D.

Vanik will be here until August.


Misc Reports

  • Giles is beginning to work on the counting house power distribution.
  • Josh and Yi have settled on PLC-to-PXI communication conventions.
  • The PXI device will act as an independent CA server, no need to go back through the PLC to get to EPICS.
  • We discussed relative merits of PLC vs EPICS archiving and expert screens in PLC vs EPICS.
  • Hovanes specified location of the UPS RDC for Paul Powers.
  • Mark and Scot have set up a computer in the solenoid controls racks in the ESB. We will eventually buy a modern computer to replace it.
  • George et al. are working on the FMEA.
  • Mark will soon start on the SOE design.
  • Mark will soon start adding transformers and panels to the JInventory system.
  • Josh is working on a flexible PLC program design, knowing that his first attempt will need modification.