ME 3242-3

PLC CONTROLLED PNEUMATIC SEQUENTIAL

CIRCUITS

Lab 3 Report
Group 1
15 NOV 2016

Name Matric Number

FAN BIN A027567W
YU XIANG A0118128J
WANG WEIXIN A0103700A
1. Introduction
Pneumatic controls are very common in industrial use, primarily for applications
that require a fixed distance travel of or reciprocation of objects. Examples include
transfer of materials between conveyors, clamping objects for assembly or testing,
punch presses etc. Compressed air is used to generate the actuating action, and
PLC is commonly used for pneumatic systems.
PLC is an electronic device developed specifically to operate on the shop-floor. It
is rugged enough to perform reliably in the plant floor environment. Apart from the
design advantages the most significant reason for using PLC is the programming
language: relay ladder logic. The close correspondence of ladder logic to relay
circuits is the reason for acceptance of PLCs on the shop-floor by engineers and
operators.

2. Objectives
To become familiar with PLC control of pneumatic components used in building
sequential circuits for industrial automation.
To design and implement a PLC program for a given cycle of operations involved
multiple cylinders.

3. Experimental Procedure
3.1 Initial Setup of PLC and pneumatic components
Connect the 3-pin plug of the PLC to the mains. Plug the communication cable
from the PC to the RS422 socket of the PLC. With the cables provided, connect the
input and output ports of the PLC according to the table and diagram below:

Output Targets Input Ports Source Input Ports Source

Ports
Y2 A+ X0 RSA+ X10 PB1
Y3 B+ X1 RSB+ X11 PB2
Y4 C+ X2 RSC+
Y5 D+ X3 RSD+
Y6 A- X4 RSA-
Y7 B- X5 RSB-
Y10 C- X6 RSC-
Y11 D- X7 RSD-
3.2. Task:
A+A- B+ B-(Delay 3s) C+ C- D+ D-
Interpretation:
There will be 4 pistons action in following sequence, A+A- B+ B-(Delay 3s) C+ C-
D+ D-, in our task.
After piston B fully retracted, there will be 3s delay before piston C start to extend.

3.3. PLC Design and Implementation

a) Group
Action A+ A- B+ B- (Delay C- D+ D-
3s) C+
Group 1 2 3 4 5

b) Programming
4. Circuit Design

A required sequence was given: A+ A- B+ B- (Delay 3s) C+ C- D+ D-

Cascading method was used to design the sequence. Steps as following:

a) Divide the sequence into groups such that no letter is repeated within the
same group.

| A+ | A- B+ | B- (Delay 3s) C+ | C- D+ | D- |

b) For each group, assign a flip-flop.

Experiment III: PLC Controlled Pneumatic Sequential Circuits

Group 1: S1 = (Start X007 + S1) S2

Group 2: S2 = (S1 X000 + S2) S3
Group 3: S3 = (S2 X001 + S3) S4
Group 4: S4 = (S3 X002 + S4) S5
Group 5: S5 = (S4 X003 + S5) X007

c) For each group, initiate motion to each solenoid.

Group 1:
A+ (Y002) = S1
Group 2:
A- (Y006) = S2
B+ (Y003) = S2 X004
Group 3:
B- (Y007) = S3
C+ (Y004) = S3 X005
Group 4:
C- (Y010) = S4
D+ (Y005) = S4 X006
Group 5:
D- (Y011) = S5

d) Adding timer in between B- and C+

One more branch under Group3: (T0 K30) = S3 X005

Thus, group 4 become: Group 4: S4 = (S3 T0 K30 + S4) X007

Time delay added.

5. Problem analysis
a) Separate wrongly of the input ports & output ports for table 4.1.
Connection was not working at the beginning due to wrongly grouping,
information was gathered and tried to group it out after realized the mistake.
Problem was solved after group members discussion.
b) Forget to put T0 after the delay.
No delay effect happened, after multi trials, realised the mistake and
amend the programme and re-write it. Successfully run after T0 was inserted at
the programme.

6. Summary of the experiment

By completing the three experiments, the pneumatic components and the PLC are
known and familiarized to students. Changes were made for each experiment to
demonstrate to students of different way of activating the pneumatic components,
where for the last practice, delay timer was also added.
After the three practices, students have designed a circuit which to achieve the
required sequences of different targets. Cascading method was applied to design
the sequences, which is an easier method to build sequence groups and program
the correct logic flow.

7. Conclusion
In this experiment, we designed and implemented a PLC program for a given cycle
of operations involved multiple cylinders. Through the experiment, we are now
familiar with PLC control of pneumatic components used in building sequential
circuits for industrial automation. We are able to design and trouble-shooting for
simple PLC programs.
We learned that the PLC is very convenient for automation industry to do
modification and implementation, since programs can be modified with very little
hardware modification.