The PLC that I'm going to use to run this 3-phase electrical motor with star-delta starter
is a Siemens S7 PLC. The software package that Siemens has provided for programming
these types of PLCs is STEP 7. In the previous lesson, I created a new project
in STEP 7 and then began configuring the PLC modules in the hardware. In this lesson I'm
going to complete the hardware configuration and then I'm going to download it to the PLC.
Based on the modules that I have on the rack in the actual environment, I've placed two
PLC modules on the rack in the software so far. The first module is the power supply
and the next module is the CPU. The next module that I need to add to the
rack is a 32 point digital input module. To find this DI module, I should look into
the SM300 folder and then open the "DI300". Here as you can see, there is long list of
different digital input modules. The order number of the DI module that I have
on the rack in the actual environment is " 6ES7 321 1BL00 0AA0".
So here in the software I need to double click on this module and add it to the rack.
When I do this, as you can see, it gives me a warning saying that I'm not able to insert
any module except an "interface module" in slot 3, so I'm going to select the next slot
and insert the DI module there. Now why can't I insert my module in slot 3?
In the software environment, slot 3 may contain only an "interface module". This means you
cannot insert any other module in the slot besides an "interface module".
Now what if you didn't have an "interface module" among all the modules that you're
going to use in your project? In that situation, you would simply leave
this slot empty! Now you may ask, “When I don’t have an
interface module and I leave slot 3 empty in the software, do I need to do the same
in the actual environment as well?” The answer is NO! Why? Because if you do that,
the CPU won't be able to communicate data with the rest of the PLC modules! So when
you don’t have an interface module in your project, you leave slot 3 empty in the software
but in the actual environment, you place the PLC modules right next to each other and without
any empty space! The next module that I need to place on the
rack is the digital output module. The DO module that I have in the actual environment
is a 16 point digital output module and its order number is " 6ES7 322-1BH81- 0AA0.
So here I'm going to open the "DO 300" folder and from these 16 point digital output modules,
I will select this module to add it to the rack!
Okay now the configuration is done and I can download the hardware to the PLC or the simulator.
To run the PLC simulator, all I need to do is to go to the SIMATIC environment and click
on this "simulator on/off" icon. As you can see, the simulator is in the STOP
mode at the moment. To put the simulator into the RUN mode, I will simply check this box
here. To have the simulator window stay on the computer
screen, from the "view" menu, I will select "always on top".
Now the simulator is active and ready. To download the hardware to the PLC simulator,
the first thing that I do is "save and compile" the hardware then I'm going to hit "download
to module" here in the toolbar. In the "select target module" I need to select
the CPU that I'm going to download the hardware to. Here, since I only have one CPU and there
is no industrial network, it only shows one CPU which is on slot 2 of rack zero.
So I will select this CPU here and then click okay.
In the next window, I need to select the MPI address for the CPU that I'm going to download
the hardware to. To do this, I click on "view", choose the desired MPI address and then click
"okay". When the PLC is in run mode and you're downloading
the hardware, the PLC always goes to the STOP mode. Here it warns me that this will happen
if I download the hardware to the CPU. In the next window it asks me if I want to
RUN the CPU again. I choose YES and as you can see, the CPU goes
into the RUN mode again. Okay I configured the hardware and then successfully
downloaded it to the PLC simulator. Now let's go to the next lesson and start writing a
PLC program that can fully control an electrical motor with a star-delta starter.
Now here is what I want from you in the comments bellow this video .
What have you learned from watching this video?
Can you imagine implementing something from this video in your next PLC programming project?
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