Hello everybody, after reading for a few months now I figured it was time to post. The problem I am currently faced with is getting the controller to output a signal that I am able to pickup and use to drive a light. I am attempting to replicate the SmartLight by Caron Engineering.
A bit more background-Our shop is currently going through an industry 4.0 transformation and we are slowly adding our machines to a monitoring software. For out older machines that are not capable of FOCAS this output signal is easier to get because the hardware that is used by the machine monitoring software has available outputs that can be driven by the software.
TL/DR What I need guidance on is with the newer FOCAS/MTConnect capable machines that do not have added hardware. With these machines i would like to use macros to drive a signal on the plc ladder. Can someone direct me to a starting point on how to do this. The controllers in question are FANUC 31i, 16i,18i.