Podcasts about VFD

Shawn Tierney meets up with Mark Berger of Siemens to learn how Siemens integrates SIRIUS ACT devices (push buttons, selector switches, pilot lights) with PROFINET in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 253 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mark Berger of Siemens for coming on the show and sending us a sample! Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back in to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights. And today on the show, we have a special treat. We have Mark Berger back on from Siemens to bring us up to speed on serious act. He’s gonna tell us all about the product, and then we’re even gonna do a small demo and take a look at it working live. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump into this episode with Mark Burger from Siemens and learn all about their push buttons on PROFINET. Mark, it’s been a while since you’ve been on the show. Thank you for coming back on and agreeing to talk about this. Mark Berger (Siemens): Oh, thank you so much. I truly appreciate you letting me be on. I appreciate your channel, and I enjoy watching it. And I’m excited to show you some of this great technology. So I’ve got, the PowerPoint up here. We’ll just do a simple PowerPoint to kinda give you an overview, and then we’ll dive into the hardware. Shawn Tierney (Host): Appreciate it. Thank you. Mark Berger (Siemens): No problem. So as we stated, the Sirius X over PROFINET, let me emphasize that, the, actuators, the push buttons, the estops, the selector switches, they are all standard, when you use these. So if you have those on the shelf, the only thing that PROFINET does is that it adds, removes the normal contact blocks and adds the PROFINET, terminal blocks on the back. So every all the actuators that we’re showing are just standard actuators for the 22 millimeter push button line. So easy to use, modern design, performance and action, and extremely rugged and flexible. The, 22 millimeter is out of the box IP 69 k, which for those who are maybe in the food and beverage, verticals would understand what that is. And that’s for direct hose down, wash down, able to handle a high pressure washing and not able to leak past the actuator into the panel. So IP 69 k is a a great place for dust and wash down and hosing and where you’re having rain and so forth, to be able to protect for a keep of any, water passing into the panel. So introduction wise, it’s, the PROFINET push buttons for us. It it is, again, the same actuators, the same, connections, and so forth, but what we’re going to exchange is the terminal blocks, for it. So on there, I stated it’s, IP 69 k is standard. You don’t need any, extra covers forward or anything to fulfill that requirement, But it’s, it’s insensitive to dust and oil and caustic solutions, you know, like citric acid where you’re hosing down some stainless steel parts and so forth. Now what we have here is, changing out the terminal blocks that have wiring. So usually on a push button, you have two wires coming in, and then you have, for illuminated, you have two wires coming in and so forth and going out. And after you have 20 or 30 push buttons or 10 or 15 push buttons, you’ve got a substantial little bit of wiring or cabling that will be passing from the door over into the main cabinet of your control cabinet. What we’re going to do with PROFINET push buttons is we’re going to eliminate all that wiring. And then in addition, eliminate the input and output cards that you will need for your PLC and take it down to a pro, Ethernet cable, an r j r j 45 cable, and then down to a 24 volts. And that’s all that will pass from the cabinet onto the door where you’re mounting your push buttons. So, huge, safe and cost of wires. We’re reducing all the wire outlay. And, you know, back in the day when I build panels, it was an art how you got all the wires all nice and pretty and got them laid out and wire tied them down and so forth and just made the a piece of art on the backside. And then, it it was all done. You got it all wired. And then, of course, there was somebody that said, hey. We forgot to add another selector switch. So you had to go back and cut all that stuff and redo the whole layout and so forth. So with PROFINET, it’s extremely flexible and easily, to adapt to if you need something, more because you’re not taking all that wiring back to the panel, passing it across the hinge of the door and so forth. It is also with a safety PLC. You do have PROFIsafe, so we can do estops on the door as you can see here in the picture, but then we can do non safe applications also. So today, we’ll be just doing some non safe applications. And then the communications again is PROFINET. But then also just to touch real quick, we do have it on IO Link and on Aussie with our push buttons. So what is SiriusACT with PROFINET? There we go. So what you have is the first, block or interface module that you put on the back of your push button, that’s where the, Ethernet is plugged into and your 24 volts is plugged into. And then after that, subsequently, then the push buttons that you have is that you have what we call a terminal module. And in between the, the interface module to a terminal module or from terminal module to terminal module, you can go up to one meter of cabling, and it’s a ribbon cable. And we’ll show that here shortly. And then if you have up to we can do up to 20 push buttons, terminal modules, with a total of 21 push buttons. And then so from the first interface module all the way to the last push button, you can go up to 10 meters. And then it gives, again, 24 volt power supply for it. And we have, again, as I stated, as nonsafe, talking just PROFINET, and then the safety version, talking PROFISAFE on PROFINET. So serious act, we can go up on the the safety up to seal three and performance level e as an echo. We have, again, the the standard interface module without safety. You have the PLC, the interface module, and then the subsequent terminal modules for it. And then the cabling that goes from the interface module to out to the terminal modules is a simple ribbon cable that comes into the back of the terminal modules. The only tool that you need is simply it’s just a screwdriver, and, you, push it into the terminal module, push down. It uses, vampire connections, insulation displacement, vampire connections, and you push it down in. There’s no stripping of the wires. There’s no mix up. The indicator you can see on the wires here in a minute will show you that there’s a little red line that shows you, which way it, enters into the terminal, and then that’s it. It’s very straightforward. It’s, very simple with tools. And, as I stated, it’s, just like a normal push button that you’d put on, but then we’re gonna add, remove the contact block and add the terminal module or the interface module in the place of the contact block. Just to emphasize again, we can do PROFISAFE on, with a safety PLC and a safety controller, and we can give you all the safety, requirements for the either the ISO or the IEC specifications for safety out there in the field. Here’s some of the part numbers. First one, of course, is the interface module, and that has the ability to do PROFIsafe. It has also, additionally, four digital inputs, one digital output, and then one analog input. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more just in a few minutes. And then the non safe version, 24 volts. You have a, two versions of this one, one with just with just a standard, 24 volts input, but then there’s an additional one that has the four digital in, one digital out, and one analog in. So there’s two different part numbers. One where you don’t need the additional, digital inputs and outputs and analog, and then the and then the part number with the the additional inputs and outputs. But the safety one comes there’s no other version, just the one. Then you have what we call the terminal modules, and there’s three versions. One terminal module is just the command module only. It’s mounted with two mechanical signaling blocks to signal. So you have two contact blocks built in. Then you have one that’s a terminal module with the command, the terminal blocks, and then also an integrated LED. And then you can put what color you want the LED to be, and you can see there the the part number changed for red, blue, amber, so on. And then you have a just an LED module to where it’s no contactors. It’s just LED. And, I think with our demo we’re gonna show today, we’re just gonna show the contact block and LED module and only the LED module today. There’s some other, accessories with the safety. There’s a memory module to where that you, is all the configurations are put into the memory module, and something happens to that interface module. Everything’s put in there, the IP address, the configuration, and everything. If something gets broke and so forth or you have to replace it, you pull the memory module out, put the new terminal or interface module in, plug in the memory module, cycle the power, and it’s up and running. All the configurations, the IP address, everything’s already there. And then on the interface module, it does not come with an LED, so you’re required to buy this this, LED right here if you need it for it, and that’s what you use for the interface module. And then, of course, the ribbon cable that goes between the interface module to the terminal block or terminal module and terminal module and so forth come in five meter length and 10 meter length. K. So what’s it provide for you? Well, the benefits are, I’ll I’ll be very blunt. If it’s just one or two buttons on a panel, it won’t be that cost effective. Yes. We’re reducing the IO, the IO inputs and outputs, but for the savings, it’s not the best. Now when you get up to about three or four push buttons, then that cost saving is, very realized. Now when you go up to 20 push buttons, yes, you’re saving a lot of money, especially in the IO cards that you’re not gonna be required to have. And then, of course, all the wiring and the labor, getting it all wired up and doing all the loop checks to make sure that when you push this button, it’s wired into the right terminal block on the IO card, so on and so forth. So about, the break is about two to three push buttons to where it will become very cost effective for you to use it. But like I said yesterday, without PROFINET push buttons, it was all the wiring you brought across and putting them into all your IO cards and so forth. And now with PROFINET push buttons, all that goes away, and all you’re bringing across is an Ethernet cable and 24 volts positive and 24 volts negative across that hinge into the door. And that’s it. K. And then emphasizing again, we can do PROFIsafe and those, push buttons and estops. The estop can be part of your safety circuit and give you the, safety levels that you’re required from either sill and or performance level safeties depending on the specification, IEC, or ISO that you’re following within your plant. K? And then hardware configuration. Now this is where we step into reduction of engineering and helping you guys get going, quicker and making sure engineering is done properly. You know, back in the day, we’d wire up all the wires, coming from the push buttons, you know, a selector switch, a start button, stop button, indicator lights, and so forth. And and all those wires sometimes just, you know, the what we’re working with, all the wires look the same. You’ve put labels on them. You may have labeled it wrong, and you wired into an input card or an output card. So there’s some time where you’re over there doing some loop checks where you’re trying to say, yes. That’s coming into input byte dot bit, and that should be the selector switch. Well, with the PROFINET push buttons, we’re able to not have to worry about that, and we’re gonna demonstrate that just here in a minute. But you also have a full lineup of the push buttons coming into portal so that you can see the lineup and verify that it is the parts that you want. In TI portal, you can see that, of course, the first, button is the interface module, and then sequentially is the terminal modules that have either just contactors, LED and contactors, or just LEDs. And we’ll we’ll show that just here momentarily. But it’s all integrated into TIA portal. It has a visual representation of all the push buttons, and it’s simple and fast, to, configure. We’ll show you that here in just a moment. And there’s no addressing, for it. So some of the stuff that you have out there, you have addressing, making sure what the address is right, and so on. This is a standardized data management, and it’s extremely time saving and engineering saving for, the user. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, let me ask you a question about that. If the snow addressing, do the items show up, in the order that they’re wired? In other words, you know, you’re daisy chasing the you’re you’re going cable to cable from device to device. Is that the order that they show up? Mark Berger (Siemens): That’s exactly right. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Mark Berger (Siemens): So if you don’t know which ones are what, you just literally put run your hand from the interface module, follow that cable, and the next one that will be visually saw in portal will be the one that it lands on first. Perfect. And then there’s a cable that leaves that one and goes into the next one, daisy chained, and then that’s what’ll be represented in that lineup. And here in just a minute, we’ll we’ll show that. Alright. Thank you for that question. Okay. Now once I got it wired up, how do I know that I got it wired properly? And we’re gonna show that here in just a minute. But just graphically wise, you have the ability to see if it is all wired up. You do not need to plug it into the PLC. This all it needs is 24 volts. The PLC can come later and plugging it in later and so forth. There’s no programming. This all comes out of the box. So once you plug it in, if all on the backside looking at the terminal blocks and the daisy chain ribbon cable, if it’s all green, you wired it up properly, and it’s working properly. But then if you see a red light flashing either at the terminal module because that will that will bubble up to the terminal module. So if you have a problem somewhere pardon me, the interface module. If you have some problem with the terminal modules, a push button like number two or three or four, it will bubble up into the, interface module to let it know, hey. We got a problem. Can you look to see where it’s at? And as you see here, we have maybe a device that’s defective. And so it bubbles up into the interface module to let you know, and a red light lets you know that we have maybe a defective module. You know, something hammered it pretty hard, or, it may have been miswired. Then the second one down below, we’ve got a wiring error to where you don’t have the green lights on the back and everybody else’s there’s no green light shown. That means you have a wiring error. Or if everything works great, it’s green lights across, but then the next level of this is is my push button working? So then we you’ll push or actuate the push button or actuate the selector switch, and the green light will flash to let you know that that terminal module or interface module is working properly. And we’ve done our our, loop checks right there before we’ve even plugged it into the PLC or your programmer has come out and sat down and worked with it. We can prove that that panel is ready to roll and ready to go, and you can set it aside. And if you got four or five of the same panel, you can build them all up, power it up, verify that it’s all green lights across the board. It is. Great. Set it down. Build up another one and go on from there. So it shows you fast fault detection without any additional equipment or additional people to come in and help you show you that. When we used to do loop checks, usually had somebody push the button, then yell at the programmer, hey. Is this coming in at I zero dot zero? Yeah. I see it. Okay. Or then he pushed another one. Hey. Is this coming in on I 0.one? No. It’s coming in on i0. Three. So there was that two people and then more time to do that loop check or the ring out as some people have called it. So in this case, you don’t need to do that, and you’ll see why here in just a minute. And then, again, if we do have an interface module that, maybe it got short circuited or something hit it, it you just pull the ePROM out, plug it into the new one, bring in the ribbon cable, and cycle the power, and you’re up and running. Alright. And then this is just some of the handling options of how it handles the data, with the projects and so forth, with basic setups, options that you can be handling with this, filling bottles. What we wanna make sure to understand is that if maybe push buttons, you can pick push buttons to work with whatever project you want it to do. So if you have six push buttons out there, two of them are working on one, bottle filling, and then the rest of them are working on the labeling, you can separate those push buttons. Even though that they’re all tied together via PROFINET, you can use them in different applications across your machine. Shawn Tierney (Host): You’re saying if I have multiple CPUs, I could have some buttons in light work with CPU one, PLC one, and some work with PLC two? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. There’s handling there. There’s programming in the backside that needs to be done, but, yes, that can happen. Yep. Oh, alright. So conclusion, integrated into TI portal. We’re gonna show that here in a minute. So universal system, high flexibility with your digital in, digital outs, analogs, quick and easy installation, one man, one hand, no special tooling, and then substantially reducing the wiring and labor to get it going. And then, again, integrated safety if, required for the your time. So with that, let’s, switch over to TI portal. So I’ve already got a project started. I just called it project three. I’ve already got a PLC. I’ve got our, new g, s seven twelve hundred g two already in. And then what I’m gonna do is I’ve, already built up the panel. And, Shawn, if you wanna show your panel right here. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Let me go ahead and switch the camera over to mine. And so now everybody’s seeing my overhead. Now do you want me to turn it on at this point? It’s off. Yeah. Yeah. Mark Berger (Siemens): Let’s do it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Gonna turn it on, and all the lights came on. So we have some push buttons and pilot lights here, but the push buttons are illuminated, and now they’ve all gone off. Do you want me to show the back now? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. So what we did there is that we just showed that the LEDs are all working, and that’s at the initial powering up of the 24 volts. Now we’re gonna switch over and, you know, open up the cabinet and look inside, and now we’re looking on the backside. And if you remember in the PowerPoint, I said that we’d have all green lights, the everything’s wired properly. And as you look, all the terminal modules all have green lights, and so that means that’s all been wired properly. If you notice, you see a little red stripe on the ribbon cable. That’s a indication. Yep. To show you that. And then if you look on the on the out on the, the interface module, Shawn, there’s it says out right there at the bottom. Yeah. There’s a little dot, and that dot means that’s where the red stripe goes, coming out. So that little dot means that’s where the red stripe comes. Yep. Right there. And that’s how it comes out. And then if you look just to the left a little bit, there’s another, in, and there’d be a red dot underneath that ribbon cable showing you how the red the the red goes into it. Notice that everything’s clear, so you can see that the wire gets engaged properly all the way in. And then all you do is take a screwdriver and push down, and then the vent, comes in. The insulation displacement comes in and, and, makes the connections for you. So there’s no strip tie cable stripping tools or anything special for doing that. Another item, just while we’re looking, if you look in the bottom left hand corner of that terminal module, you see kind of a a t and then a circle and then another t. That’s an indicator to let you know that that’s two contactors and an LED that you have on the backside. Shawn Tierney (Host): We’re talking about right here? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Yep. Right there. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Mark Berger (Siemens): So that’s an indicator to tell you what type of terminal block it is a terminal, block that it is. That’s two contactors and LED. And then if you look at one in the bottom left hand corner, there’s just a circle. That means you just have an LED. So you have some indicators to show you what you’re looking at and so forth. So today, we’re just using the two, LED only, and then we’re doing the contactor and LED combination. I I don’t have one there on your demo that’s just the contactor. So Shawn Tierney (Host): Now you were telling me about these earlier. Yeah. Mark Berger (Siemens): So yeah. The so if you look there on that second row of the terminal blocks, you have a UV and an AI, and I’ll show that in the schematic here in just a little bit, but there, that is a 10 volt output. If you put a 250 ohm or 250 k ohm, potentiometer and then bring that signal back into AI, you have an analog set point that comes in for it that will automatically be scaled zero to 1,000 count or zero to 10 volts. Mhmm. And then you can use that for a speed reference for a VFD. And it’s already there. All you have to do, you don’t have to scale it or anything. You can put it towards, you know, okay. Zero to 1,000 count means zero to 500 PSI or or zero to 100 feet per second on a conveyor belt, and I’m I’m just pulling numbers out. But that’s the only real scalability scaling you have to do. So it’ll be a zero to 1,000 count is what you’ll see instead of, like, yep. Then you got four digital ins that you can use and then a one digital out. Now the four, I, kinda inquired wife just four, but let’s say that you have a four position joystick. You could wire all four positions into that interface module, and then the output could be something else for a local horn that you want or something to that case with it. So you in addition to the, push buttons, you also have a small, distribution IO block right there in the in your panel. Shawn Tierney (Host): Which is cool. Yeah. I mean, maybe yeah. Like you said, maybe you have something else on the panel that doesn’t fit in with, you know, this line of push buttons and pilot lights like a joystick. Right? And that makes a lot of sense. You were saying too, if I push the button, I can test to see if it’s working. Mark Berger (Siemens): Correct. So if you yep. Go right ahead. Shawn Tierney (Host): I’m pushing that middle one right there. You can see it blinking now. Mark Berger (Siemens): And that tells you that the contacts have been made, and it’s telling you that the contacts work properly. Shawn Tierney (Host): And now I’m pushing the one below it. So that shows me that everything’s working. The contacts are working, and we’re good to go. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Everything’s done. We’ve done the loop checks. We know that this is ready to be plugged into the PLC and handed off to whomever is going to be, programming the PLC and bring it in, in which means that we’ll go to the next step in the TI portal. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Let me switch back to you, and we’re seeing your TI portal now. Mark Berger (Siemens): Awesome. Okay. So I’ve got the PLC. I’ve plugged it in to if if I needed an Ethernet switch or I’ve plugged it directly into the PLC. Now I have just built up that panel. I haven’t had anything, done with it for an IP address because it is a TCP IP protocol. So we need to do a IP address, but it’s on PROFINET. And then I’m gonna come here to online access, and I wanna see that I can see it out there that I’m talking to it. So I’m gonna do update accessible devices. It’s gonna reach out via my, Ethernet port on my laptop. And then there’s our g two PLC and its IP address. So that’s that guy right here. Mhmm. And then I have something out there called accessible devices, and then this is its MAC address. So what I and I just have those two items on the network, but, you know, you could have multiples as, you know, with GI portal. We can put an entire machine in one project. So I come here and drop that down, and I go to online diagnostics. I I go online with it, but I don’t have really a lot here to tell me what’s going on or anything yet. But I come here, and I say assign IP address. And I call one ninety two, one sixty eight, zero zero zero, and zero ten zero, and then our usual 255, two fifty five, two fifty five, and then I say assign IP address. Give it a second. It’s gonna go out and tell it, okay. You’re it. Now I wanna see if it took, and you look right there, it took. And I’m I’m kinda anal, so I kinda do it again just to verify. Yep. Everything’s done. It’s got an IP address. Now I’m gonna come up, and I’m going to go to my project, and I’m gonna switch this to new network view. Here’s my PLC. I’m gonna highlight my project. Now there’s two ways I can go about it, and I’m sure, Shawn, you’ve learned that Siemens allows you to kinda do it multiple ways. I could come in here and go into my field devices, and I could come into my commanding and interface modules, and I’d start building my push button station. But we’re gonna be a little oh and ah today. We’re gonna highlight the project. I’m gonna go to online, and I’m gonna come down here to hardware detection and do PROFINET devices from network. Brings up the screen to say, hey. I want you to go out and search for PROFINET industrial Ethernet. Come out via my, NIC card from my laptop, and I want you to start search. Shawn Tierney (Host): For those of you who watched my previous episodes doing the e t 200 I o, this is exactly the same process we used for that. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. And I found something out there that I know I gave the IP address, but it doesn’t have a PROFINET name yet. So that’s okay. I’ve I got the IP address. We’ll worry about the PROFINET name. So we’ll hide check mark this, and this could be multiple items. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Mark Berger (Siemens): K. So now add device. Shawn Tierney (Host): And this is the sweet part. Mark Berger (Siemens): And right here, it’s done. It went out, interrogated the interface module, and said, okay. Are you there? Yep. I’m here. Here’s my IP address. And it also shared with it all of come in here, double click on it now. Shawn Tierney (Host): The real time saver. Yep. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. And then now here’s all the push buttons in your thing. And let me zoom that out. It’s at 200%. Let’s go out to a 100. And now it already interrogated the interface module and all the terminal modules to tell me what’s in my demo. Yep. And again, as you stated in your questions, how do I know which one’s the next one? You just saw the ribbon cable Mhmm. And then it brings you so forth and so on. So that’s done. We’re good. I’m gonna go back to my network view, and I’m gonna say, hey. I want you to communicate via PROFINET to there, which I’m done. And then it also gives you here’s the PLC that you’re gonna do because, you know, if we have a big project, we may have four or five of these stations, and you wanna know which PLC is the primary PLC on it. And then we’ve done that. I’m going to quickly just do a quick compile. And next, I’m gonna come here. I’m gonna click here. Now I could just do download and and let the PROFINET name, which is here, go into it. But I’m gonna right click, and I’m gonna say assign device name and say update list. It’s gonna go interrogate the network. Takes a second. No device name assigned. No PROFINET name. So this is how we do that time determinism with PROFINET. So I’m gonna highlight it, and I say assign the name, and it’s done. Close. So now it has a PROFINET name and IP address. So now I’m able to go in here and hit download and load. And we’re going to stop because we are adding hardware, so we are putting the CPU in stop and hit finish. Now I always make sure I’m starting the CPU back up and then hit finish. And then I’m gonna go online, go over here and show network view, and go online. And I got green balls and green check marks all over the board, so I’m excited. This works out. Everything’s done. But now what about the IO? So now your programmer is already talking to it, but now I need to know what the inputs and outputs are. So go back offline, double click here, and then I’m gonna just quickly look at a couple things. The interface modules IO tags are in a different spot than the terminal modules. So just a little note. It’s right here. If you double click on integrated I LED, you click here and then go to properties and say IO tags. There it lists all of the inputs and outputs. So it comes here. But if I do a terminal module, click here, then once you just click on it in general oops. Sorry. In general, it’s right here in the IO addressing. There’s where it starts start the bytes, but then I come here to tags, and then here’s the listing. So the the the programs automatically already allocated the byte and the bit for each of these guys. So if I click there, there, click there, there’s it there, onward and upward. Now notice that the byte so if I click on position four, it is three. So it’s one one less because the base zero versus here, it’s five. Just give me a little bit of a so if you look in here, all that starts at I four dot zero. I four dot zero. So k. So that’s there. So I’m gonna come here. I’m gonna go to the selector switch for this, and I’ve called it s s one, and that’s input two dot zero. Then I’m gonna click here, and I’m gonna call this green push button. Notice there’s two inputs because I have one contactor here, one contactor there, and 30 and 31. So then what I’m gonna do is that I’m going to go over here to the PLC, and I’m gonna go to and it’s updated my PLC tag table. There you go. It’s in there. So then I’m gonna grab that guy. I’m gonna because portal pushes you to use two monitors. I’m gonna come here, go to the main OB, and then I’m gonna just grab a normally open contact, drag it on, drop it, put it in there we go. And then I’m gonna grab selector switch and drop that right there, and grab green LED and drop that right there, and then close that out and compile. And everybody’s happy. I’m gonna download and say yes. Okay. And then I’m gonna go online. Alright. So it’s waiting in for me to switch that, and there you go. And if you wanna see my screen there, Shawn, that’s the green light is turned on. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Let me switch over to Okay. Bring up your, alright. And could you switch it back off now? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yeah. No problem. Yep. So there we go. We switch it off. We switch it on. Now I wanna show you something kinda cool. If I turn that off and I come back here and I go offline Mhmm. I have a indicator light that needs to flash to let the operator know that there’s something here I need you to attend to. So we used to put in some type of timer. Right? Mhmm. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Mark Berger (Siemens): And so what we would do here instead of that, I’m gonna come back down here to my tab and go to the hardware config. I’m gonna double click here. I’m gonna go to module parameters, and I’m gonna drop this down, and I’m gonna put it at two hertz. Also, just to point out, I can also do a normally open contact and a normally closed contact and switch them. You see right here. Cool. And I can control the brightness of the LED if it has an LED, and it’s all hard coded into it. So once I’ve done that, do a quick compile. I’m I mean, you know, I’ve always compile and then do download. Mhmm. Mhmm. So we’re gonna download that and hit load and finish. K. Here we go. Turn that on, and now it’s flashing. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s great. So you have a timer built in. If you need to flash, you don’t have to go get a clock bit or create your own timer. Plus, if it’s a button, you can change the contacts from normally open to normally closed. That is very cool. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. And that is PROFINET push buttons. As I stated let me quickly pull that up. Remember, you pointed out just a few minutes ago, here is the wiring diagram for that. So here’s the back of that with the terminal blocks. And you come down here, and it shows you that you just wire in that, variable resistor or a potentiometer. And you see m and you there’s the 10 volts, and then the signal comes into a. And then that guy is right here. Excellent. So if you come here, you go to properties and IO tags, and it comes in on I 60 fours and input and IO tags, and then I could call that a pot. Yeah. And now you have a potentiometer that you can use as a a speed reference for your VFD. That is very cool. Engineering efficiency, we reduced wiring. We don’t have all the IO cards that is required, and we have the diagnostics. Emphasize that each of these here, their names, you can change those if you would like because this is your diagnostic string. So if something goes wrong here, then it would come up and say commanding. So you double click here, and we go here to general, and it’ll say commanding and underscore LED module two, or you can you can call that start conveyor p b. And then that would change this. Now see this changed it. This would be your diagnostic string to let you know if if that button got damaged or is not working properly. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanted to ask you too. If I had, let’s say I needed two potentiometers on the front of the enclosure, could I put another interface module in the system? Even if it didn’t have any push buttons on it or pilots on it, could I just put it in there to grab, some more IO? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Yes, sir. I have a customer that he uses these as small little IO blocks. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I mean, if you just needed a second pot, it might make sense to buy another interface module and bring it into that than buying an analog card. Right? Assuming the resolution and everything was app you know, correct for your application, but that’s very cool. I you know, it it really goes in line with all the videos we’ve done recently looking at e t 200 I o, all the different flavors and types. And when you walk through here, you know, I’m just so especially, thankful that it reads in all the push buttons and their positions and pilot lights. Because if you have this on your desk, you’re doing your first project, you can save a lot of dragging and dropping and searching through the hardware catalog just by reading it in just like we can read in a rack of, like, e t 200 SPIO. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Engineering efficiency, reducing wiring, reducing time in front of the PC to get things up and running. You saw how quickly just a simple push button and a and, you know, again, a simple start and turn that on and off the races we went. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, Mark, I really wanna thank you. Was there anything else that we wanted to cover before we close out the show? Mark Berger (Siemens): Nope. That’s just about it. I think, we got a little bit to have your your viewers, think about for it. So I appreciate the time, and I really appreciate you allowing me to show this. I think this is a a really engineering efficiency way of going about using our push buttons and and, making everybody’s projects in a timely manner and getting everything done and having cost savings with it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, and I wanna thank you for taking the time out of your busy day, not only to put together a little demo like you have for me to use here in the school, but also to come on and show our audience how to use this. And I wanna thank our audience. This was actually prompted from one of you guys out there at calling in or writing in. I think it was on YouTube somewhere and saying, hey. Could you cover the PROFINET push buttons from Siemens? I didn’t even know they had them. So thanks to the viewers out there for your feedback that helps guide me on what you wanna see. And, Mark, this would not be possible if it wasn’t for your expertise. Thank you for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it. Mark Berger (Siemens): Thank you, Shawn. All the best. Thank you. Shawn Tierney (Host): I hope you enjoyed that episode. And I wanna thank Mark for taking time out of his busy schedule to put together that demo and presentation for us and really bring us up to speed on Sirius X. And I wanna thank the user out there who put a comment on one of my previous videos that said, hey. Did you know Siemens has this? Because I wouldn’t have known that unless you said that. So thank you to all you. I try to read the comments every day or at least every two days, and so I appreciate you all wherever you are, whether you’re on YouTube, the automation blog, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and wherever you’re listening to this, I just wanna thank you for tuning in. And now with next week being Thanksgiving, we’ll have a pause in the automation show, then we have some more shows in December, and we’re already filming episodes for next year. So I’m looking forward to, releasing all those for you. And if you didn’t know, I also do another podcast called the History of Automation. Right now, it’s only available on video platforms, so YouTube, LinkedIn, and the automation blog. Hopefully, someday we’ll also do it on, audio as well. But, we’re meeting with some of the really legends in automation who worked on some of the really, you know, just really original PLCs, original HMIs, up and through, like, more modern day systems. So it’s just been a blast having these folks on to talk about the history of automation. And so if you need something to listen to during Thanksgiving week or maybe during the holidays, check out the history of automation. Again, right now, it’s only available on YouTube, the automation blog, and LinkedIn, but I think you guys will enjoy that. And I wanna wish you guys, since I won’t be back next week, a very happy Thanksgiving. I wanna thank you always for tuning in and listening, and I also wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Shawn Tierney meets up with Ivan Spronk of Siemens to learn about the SINAMICS G220 Clean Power Drive in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 251 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ivan Spronk of Siemens for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about the topics discussed in this episode, checkout the below links: White Paper – Drives Harmonics – Siemens US SINAMICS G220 Website SINAMICS G220 Catalog Siemens Product Configurator (SPC) for quick part number selection and access to data sheets and CAD files Siemens energy savings calculator, SinaSave  Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back into the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And this week, I meet up with Iren Sprock from Siemens to learn all about their g two twenty clean power drive. I also wanna thank Siemens for sponsoring this episode so I can bring it to you completely ad free. So with that said, I wanna welcome back to the show Ivan from Siemens to talk about VFDs. And, this is something we’ve been wanting to talk about for a while. But before you jump into your presentation, Ivan, could you introduce yourself to our audience for those who maybe didn’t catch your last appearance? Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Thanks a lot for just having me, back to the show here. I got a slide up here that introduces myself. I’m the product manager for the Synamix variable frequency drives for Siemens here in The US. So, yeah, happy to be back on your show. And what I would, like to talk to you about and discuss with you is our latest variable frequency drive. It’s the g two twenty and specifically the clean power drive. This is a best in class solution for a grid friendly power quality when using variable frequency drives. So Shawn, you audience may be wondering why we should discuss power grids and variable frequency drives, but I’ll just say if you’ve been around variable frequency drives or VFDs as I’ll refer to them, you’ve likely had conversations or heard something about VFDs creating or generating harmonics on the power grid. Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yeah. Or maybe you’ve, you know, someone in the audience has been involved in a situation where harmonic current and associated voltage distortion on your plants electrical grid were causing overheating on transformers and cabling or potentially causing circuit breakers to trip their fuses to open. Or maybe you’re just an engineer looking to select and specify a variable frequency drive and you may need to answer some questions about harmonics that typical VFDs generate. You can relate to any of those or if you’re just interested to know more about this topic, we’ll invite you to stay tuned here for the next thirty five to forty minutes for discussion on power quality and VFDs. So, Shawn, I’d like to just ask you, have you heard anything about the power grid lately? Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, yes. I’ve heard lots about the power grid. I know that this is more and more becoming a big issue because when you have a lot of VFDs producing all kinds of harmonics, that can cause lots of problems like the ones you just mentioned. But, also, the utilities are starting to to see this and saying, why are we putting up with this? So aside from the power grid needing to be hardened against all kinds of things, everything from EMTs to, you know, just, you know, Yahoo’s shooting transformers in the middle of nowhere. This has been a, I think, a big and growing issue. That’s why I’m glad that you’re on the talk about this because in the preshow, we just really I really got a sense of how important this was, you know, in 2025 and going into 2026. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Lots of conversations about the grid and really how the grid electrical grid is being stretched. And with all of the, you know, data centers being built, you know, lots of conversations about how power is gonna be supplied with those. In other words, I think for maybe the first time in twenty five to thirty years, they’re anticipating our usage and power requirements going up. So that’s why I think all these utilities and plant operators are interested in the grid. So some reasons to discuss then the power grid and variable frequency drives is variable frequency drives very useful for motor control, but left unchecked, they can introduce several power quality issues. Harmonics, as you can see on the screen here, typical VFDs use rectifiers that generate nonlinear currents that also distort the voltage waveform and these harmonics can propagate through the electrical grid. And, you know, with that voltage waveform potentially affecting other equipment or you know at worst case other utility customers. These voltage fluctuations can lead to flicker in lighting and perhaps even take other sensitive devices offline. Typical VFDs some of them can negatively impact power factor. Again, something that’s of interest to utilities and plant operators. And just you know there could be some resonant frequencies set up that may interfere with other things. So those are all things that yeah, harmonics, and you know, the voltage fluctuation, things that are unfavorable I’ll say. And what I’d like to do here Shawn is just gonna introduce, you know, what I want to tell you is we have a very unique product here in the SINAMICS g two twenty clean power drive. Three advantages of this product we’ll wanna talk about here through through the course of this podcast. One is the clean power technology. So you can see total harmonic current distortion is well under the strictest harmonic standards there at less than 2%. It delivers near unity power factor under almost any load conditions. And I’ll just say, you know, there has been technologies out there that have been able to produce, you know, those two attributes of of, you know, low current harmonic distortion and near unity power factor. But what’s most unique about, this product we’re that we’re launching here is the compact space saving design, and it is the smallest low harmonics drive in the market. And also available, it’s all self contained, so there’s nothing extra to install. It’s all in one footprint. And I’ll give you an example here. This product is released up to a through 150 horsepower now. By the end of the year we’ll have it released up through 200 horsepower. So this is a relatively new product on the market. But that 200 horsepower drive imagine this Shawn less than three feet tall, less than 12 inches wide, and about 14 inches deep. That’s a 200 horsepower drive, that will guarantee these, things I’ve got got here with low distortion and near unity power factor. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, that’s not something I would have thought of is that these clean drives are more clean power drives are typically larger than their standard cousins. And so the fact that you’ve been able to get these smaller and closer to the sizes of the standard drive is pretty impressive. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): You’re quite we we’d like to think so. Let’s dig into, you know, first of all, if, you know, I I said variable frequency drives or typical very free frequency drives can generate harmonics. So why why would people wanna use VFDs? Turns out variable frequency drives are really good at two things. One, saving energy, and two, improving processes. So just, you know, kind of as a reminder, why do people wanna use variable frequency drives? Just a reminder. Yeah. Half the world’s electricity is used by motors operating pumps and fans and compressors. And just as a reminder, Shawn, if you’ve got a 20 horsepower motor operating and I just use twelve hours a day, two sixty five days a year, I used average commercial power rate of 12¢ a kilowatt hour, that electric motor is gonna cost you running across the line around $5,500. If I operate that motor with a VFD and I’ve got opportunity to adjust the speed, you know, based on demand, electricity cost is half of it. So $2,500 And that even gets more grows your savings grow if I consider a 100 horsepower motor operating twelve hours a day, two fifty days a year, again, with that same kilowatt hour. You know, that running that electric motor across the line is gonna cost you, you know, I’ve got on the screen here $28,000. I’ve got the opportunity to adjust speed and control speed as I do with the VFD, and the application can, of course, doesn’t have to be run at full speed. You know, just typical savings again is gonna it’s gonna cost you less than half to run that electric motor. So I like to put those numbers in front of people, Shawn, because I think people lose sight of how much it costs to run an electric motor. So any thoughts on that? Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, when I first got in this industry back in ’90, this was big. This was talked about all the time. They were like, if you get a fan or pump and you don’t have a VFD on it, you’re just wasting money. And and and to some extent too soft status. But the point being that, you know, if the way you drove your car was you just put the pedal to the metal everywhere you went, you could just realize that’s not gonna be very efficient, you know, fuel wise. And so, you know, putting aside the process thing, because many processes, you can’t just do a cross line starter. Right? It would be great for the process, but, typically, fans and and pumps, I mean, the the amount of savings is tremendous. And I know for a very long time, this was, you know, it was up there with, lighting, up upgrading your lighting in your plant. You’re just installing VFDs or upgrading VFDs from very old VFDs. A lot of times, the cost savings and the rebates would make the the project pay for itself within a year or two, if not sooner. So it’s, for anybody listening, I know all the old timers out there are like, yeah, know all about this, but maybe he’s listening and you haven’t taken a look at that, definitely call your, local representative and ask him about energy savings with VFDs because it’s huge. I mean, it’s just massive. As you show in this slide, you know, but it’s it’s it’s just it’s it’s super. Now at your second point, processes, yeah, some processes I mean, they wouldn’t be possible if all you had was across the line. You know, we we think about, you know, needing a very precise control, very precise movement, maybe not servo control, but in some cases, you know, just, you know, starting the VFD across the line would, you know, would break things. Right? You need to coast up and coast down, and, you know, be able to vary the speed based on the but what part of the what product you’re making sometimes. But let me turn it back to you. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Sure. So one of the links that I’ve got in my resources is a a a link to it’s called CNA Save. It’s just our Siemens name for our, energy savings calculator. So somebody, you know, with that link, somebody could go in there and very quickly, you know, put in their own horsepower and speed profiles and energy costs and see for themselves, you know, more dialed in. So yeah. And I liked your your conversation about the process. I mean, so I think what I’m trying to establish on this slide really is VFDs are very useful and very effective at helping manage costs and improve process. So, you know, VFDs are not going away. So now let’s then dive into figuring out, okay, how do we handle harmonics that typical drives generate. So first, Shawn, let’s start with a conversation about what are line harmonics, and I’ve just got a few slides here to talk about that. But we’ll relate it to, you know, what we call linear loads, which is like an induction motor or resistors or incandescent lamps. They draw sinusoidal or linear current proportional to voltage. So in other words, for the audience on the looking at this slide here you can see very nice looking sine waves. Yeah. In this country of course that’s coming from our power plants at 60 Hertz. Looks very nice, right? Well, when you put a nonlinear load on your electrical distribution center system, yeah, and nonlinear loads are any power electronic device that’s converting AC power to DC power. So that’s what we’re doing in a VFD, we’re converting AC power to DC power. But also computers, you know, that’s obviously not the same talking in the same magnitude of power, but this is what computers are doing. Same thing with LED lamps now, Discharge lighting. And very interestingly enough, this is also what’s going on in EV charging stations. You know, you’re converting AC power to DC power, so that’s considered a nonlinear load. And what happens there in a nonlinear load is it doesn’t draw, it just draws power in pulses when the capacitors need to charge. So think about these capacitors charging more at the top of the waveform, And that’s then what causes these variations in both voltage and current, from the fundamental sine wave. And you know, in very simple terms, that’s what these harmonics are. Yeah. They’re non sinusoidal, they’re nonlinear, and even since it’s changing with the applied voltage. So there’s some things that they, you know, negative impacts we’ll say. And again, for the audience that’s looking at the slide there, you can kind of see some of these nonlinear currents stacked up there. Point is it creates a much more complex waveform, and there’s current flowing at those multiple frequencies. So Shawn, I’ve got for for people that are maybe having a hard time visualing this up, I’ve got a little example. So can you think, Shawn, of a musical group that sings in parts? Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Even if we can’t mention them on the air, you can we can all think of, you know, a group that’s in Yep. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. So here we go. We’ve got a musical group singing in different parts, and these different musical parts are sung at different pitches or frequencies. And that all blends together to make a richer sound. Right? Well, we can think of that fuller sound that’s flowing at those frequencies. That’s kinda like more current flowing in there. So, you know, to back to our harmonics example. So, yeah, there’s world flowing at these other frequencies other than 60 Hertz, and that kind of fundamentally becomes a problem we need to deal with. And then in that in that group, Shawn, can you think of someone what does it sound like when they sing off key? Shawn Tierney (Host): Absolutely. Who doesn’t sound good. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Does it so maybe we’ll think of that as voltage distortion. So we gotta gotta do something about that too. So Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I’d like to you know what? For me, you know, to and I think the charts for those listening, I think the charts really spell it out. They’re color coded, and they show the different harmonics. And for me, I think charting it is kinda one of the ways to understand it visually because if you think about let’s say you have a large rock, a medium rock, and a small rock, and you throw all three at the same time into a pond. You can visually see the big ripple, the medium ripple, and the small ripple, but it’s really hard for you to understand as they’re spreading out what the effect would be on, you know, any any, you know, maybe toy boats that your kids have in the water or grandkids have in the water. Right? And so it it’s it’s a very tough for for human beings to try to keep in their head more than three things happening at a time. Right? And so and so I I love seeing the chart here, and it shows the relationship to when the capacity of charging and how that affects the primary and the sympathetic and the different waveforms. And I just know that these are, you know, inducing currents, And each one of these are inducing currents, but it’s like that throwing multiple rocks into into a body of water. I just can’t I, you know, I need to see it. I need to draw it out. I just can’t, you know, understand. Hey. Well, that me means this little boat’s gonna go to the Northwest because, you know, you know, and this is where I think it’s it’s easy to overlook the effects that these harmonics have because it is it does get kinda complicated to visualize. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yeah. No. I I like that analogy of, the rocks and the water too. You can see those wave forms and yeah. It becomes, you know, more current flow that has to be dealt with. And and the voltage notching is something again, talking about typical VFDs. I’ve got a little picture here of yeah, showing in the center of the screen there. Just main section of a typical VFD with the rectifier front end that’s a six pulse, standard six pulse rectifier in there that’s what you know is very very common. You can see the DC link capacitors in the middle there, and of course the inverter section on the output which is recreating that sine wave. But let’s turn our attention to you know the input waveform that we’re showing. You can see you know drawing power creating those that notched waveform. And really what I want to point out on this slide is okay that’s kind of at the top of the slide I’ve got a picture of OneDrive doing that that you know on any given distribution system there’s a variety of loads right? Each with its own signature that interacts with each other, So you end up in trying to show down in this down in the orange section here of this drawing. Okay all of these different loads combined with their own signature to create kind of a system signature if you will. And then what happens is, okay, you’ve got standards that we’ll talk about here a little bit, but standards and specifications, you know, you’ll see if you’re an engineer dealing with harmonics, you know, they often refer to this point of common coupling. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to come across on this slide here as well is when you have a system, you know, it’s very useful to identify this point of common coupling where you’re gonna measure, these harmonics. So you’ll see that in a lot of specifications. Not sure if you ever seen that, Shawn. Shawn Tierney (Host): No. And and and just the point of common coupling, when you’re saying that you’re referring to go ahead. Give me that again. What what does that actually mean? Ivan Spronk (Siemens): If you notice over on the right side here, we’ve got a different loads. I’m showing I’m showing a couple of different drives. I’m showing few motors operating across the line, each with their own signature, but that ends up creating, you know, on the distribution system, you know, a system signature. So we need some place, you know, to decide, you know, if you’re trying to meet a spec, well, tell me then where I have to measure it. So that becomes that’s what this point of common coupling is. And I just wanted to get that term out there because people have often heard of this. Sometimes it’s right at the we’ll say the you know connection to the Utility Transformer. If you’re a plant operator maybe you’ve got a handful of buildings over here and you want to define a point of common coupling between some of these other buildings. Mhmm. But it’s just a, yeah, place to define for a measurement. Shawn Tierney (Host): So in this case they have let’s say they have a transformer here. This transformer feeds two, let’s say, VFDs and then two motor starters. So they’re exactly at that point, you know, on the outfeed of the transformer, which we know we have four loads on, to be that point of common coupling. Because what’s gonna happen is we have all these different loads, so we have all these different waveforms. We have the different harmonics from the VFDs. So that’s gonna average together to give us a a waveform that’s the combination of those four devices, And that’s point of common coupling. Alright, I’m with you. Thank you. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Exactly. Again, just one other factor, just to talk about a factor that impacts the magnitude of harmonics, is something else you’ll see in a lot of specifications is what’s called the relative short circuit ratio. And really this is just a metric that’s used when evaluating the grid’s ability to support variable frequency drives and and really any other nonlinear load, which, you know, we mentioned LED lighting and there’s other nonlinear loads out there too. But what it does is compares the strength of the grid or distribution system maybe that you have in your plant to the size of the connected load. And of course, this ratio and therefore the magnitude of the harmonics is impacted by transformer size, by what you all got connected if I’ve got other reactors, how much cable I’ve got connected. And then probably most importantly by load size and type. In other words, by load size I mean, okay is this 50 horsepower or 200 horsepower? And by type meaning, is this 300 horsepower running across the line or is it on a with a VFD? I like to give an example there, Shawn. Water treatment facilities often you hear a lot about harmonics in those facilities because often there’s such big motor loads being controlled by VFDs and that is by far the largest represents the largest percentage of load on that transformer. Right? So I’ve got to imagine kind of this remote water treatment facility, you know, what’s out there? Probably four to five to six depending on how big it is, you know, huge motors running pumps, right? And not much else. So there’s an example of people that would be you know very concerned about how much you know what percentage of nonlinear load do I have on my transformer? So that’s kind of all relates back to this short circuit ratio. Again, something you see in a lot of specs. So just trying to give some definition around what that is. Sure if you got anything, any questions or anything you wanted to add or? Shawn Tierney (Host): No. I I appreciate that. Appreciate you going over. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): No. Kind of a point I’m trying to make is, you know, there’s multiple factors that impact the magnitude and lots of things to think about and figure out. It’s like, wow. If you’re a plant engineer with responsibilities for a power grid, wouldn’t it be great not to have to think about this? And I guess ask you to remember, you know, why I showed you at the beginning of this is, well, our our product, you know, take that whatever’s I drive is giving you no distortion at the terminals, no, you know, near unity power factor. So it becomes something that can really simplify. Yeah. Make make make a life of a plant engineer much simpler by specifying products that are you know low harmonic content. So let’s talk just okay so we kind of defined variable frequency drives. We we like them. They do a lot of good things. But okay there’s some things going on with harmonics. Okay so what’s what’s necessarily bad about these harmonics? So I’ve got a couple slides here showing that’ll walk us through the effects of, you know, kind of the pain points of harmonics. So, you know, with regards to transformers, generally, remember we talked about there’s there’s more current flowing at these other frequencies. So that’s gonna induce some additional heating and additional losses, likely to see some insulation stress, possibly even some resonant frequencies that are gonna set up core vibrations. So those are some of the, you know, undesirable things with generators. You know, there’s most good sized facilities have a standby generator. Right? Well, now if I’m operating a lot of nonlinear loads, I’d really start to need need to start to pay attention to, okay, is my generator gonna work to power these nonlinear loads? So something to consider there. And what what ends up happening is you people may have to oversize that generator Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): To be able to run these nonlinear loads. And dropping down to cables and conductors again, if I’ve got more current flowing through them, that’s gonna increase your cable losses due to increased cable resistance caused by the skin effect, which is something that in tendency of alternating currents to flow primarily along the surface of the conductor. Yeah. Increasing or decreasing its ability to, you know, do its job and really deteriorating the the insulation, due to excessive heating. So those are all, you know, negative things that happen when you have a lot of harmonics. Right? Alright. Looking at one more slide of just some, you know, negative impact on circuit breakers or that may trip prematurely or fuses that may open prematurely. Again, thermomagnetic circuit breakers have these bimetallic strips that may be impacted by those additional currents flowing. Electronic type circuit breakers use current sensors which need to account for, you know, these harmonic currents. Yeah. Most circuit breakers are designed to trip at a zero crossover point. So with these distorted currents, you know, there may be some spurious zero crossovers. And then kind of some similar problems with fuses again due to heating effect. This RMS current and non uniform current distribution through the fuse element. You know, what tends to happen is people may have to oversize fuses. But of course, I’m also, you know, to match that actual RMS curve that’s flowing with these harmonics. But okay, that’s not necessarily unless somebody’s out there measuring it, they don’t know what that is. Right, Shawn? And I’ve got codes to meet. I can’t just put a way bigger fuse in. So, you know, it kind of becomes this balancing act. Right? Yep. So Yeah. So those are all things, you know, that happen when you have a lot of harmonics. Again, I can kind of summarize them on one slide here. Line, you know, line harmonics produced by these nonlinear loads cause overheating, inefficient operation, you know, and more losses, perhaps some premature line tripping, perhaps some system oscillations and instability, perhaps noise, and and yeah. And reduced power factor. So none of those are good. Right? In general, reduced efficiency, increased power loss and energy costs, and of course then higher carbon emissions as well. And yet to kind of summarize this all up, current distortion is is bad, infects your all your systems. You gotta account for it. Voltage distortion is often the one that will get people that it’s much worse because that goes all other systems as well if if left unchecked. So that’s my kind of my summary slide there of effects of harmonics and why we wanna do things to control them. So any any thoughts or questions there, Shawn? Shawn Tierney (Host): No. I think I think the slide does a good job of showing that, you know, this isn’t not just for your VFD, VSD. It’s the other things on the line too that you’re affecting. Right? So so now I’m sure some of the, some of those, listening or watching have have stories of where, you know, one drive, two drive wasn’t a problem, four, five, six drives, and they started seeing these issues because it was cumulative. Right? You know, the more drives you have. So, I’d love to hear any stories you guys that are listening and watching have about this and what you did to resolve it. But, this is this is I mean, in some cases, you may just need to get a VFD, like this clean power drive that eliminates this problem versus, you know, other ways of dealing with it. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Sure. Oh, so, yeah, that that leads well into my next kind of couple of slides here. I mean, harmonics are not new. Line harmonics voltage distortion isn’t something that’s new. I mean, this this has been around for as long as VFBs has been around. So people have come up with, you know, ways to mitigate this. And I’ve got, you know, five of those methods listed on the screen. And we’re just gonna kinda very quickly step through these. But the last one there is really we’re gonna get to okay. What is in the g two twenty that makes it unique, and why do I wanna talk about it? So again, what and we’ll come back to this summary slide at the end here, but just okay. Like I said, people have come up with a handful of different ways to try and mitigate harmonics. First one is just, you know, a simple line reactor. And what you also see is some manufacturers, and Siemens has done this too, to some of our lines. We have DC chokes in the, you know, in that DC link section. You know, it’s an inductor and really all that’s doing is imposing, you know, opposing rather the rate of change of current flowing through it. So it kinda takes the top off of those notches if you you will. Yeah. It’s simple, probably economical. It’s usually applied to each VFD. If you know something about what impedance you need, there’s there’s a selection you know available in these AC line reactors. You can select the impedance you want. But some of the negative things is they take up more panel space. They gotta wire it. And in reality, it only offers kind of a small improvement. So people invented other things. So the next thing I got here is people came up with, they call them massive harmonic filters. They’re also called line harmonic filters, you know, LHF, you see that or harmonic trap filters. And what these do is they eliminate or control kind of those dominant lower order harmonics. I didn’t talk about this much, but these harmonic currents that are flowing they’re they’re much more dominant kind of at the lower end of the frequency range so they these harmonic trap filters work on, you know, those low order harmonics. And they they can be effective for, you know, putting in front of a drive. Kind of what they consist of is a LC circuit there, maybe with a damping resistor, and they get tuned to these specific frequencies. So but again, it’s a device that takes up panel space. I have to install that separate from the drive, so I gotta wire it. And then they don’t do a very good job because they still have, you know, voltage notching and instability on gen generator operation is a a is a known problem with these things. And okay you’re introducing more losses to the system. So that’s passive harmonic filters. The next thing I’ve got here is, you may have this has been pretty common in the industry. It’s called the 18 pulse front end. And really what this does is uses takes your incoming three phase power and really converts it to nine phases with a, you know, special transformer, that creates a phase shift between these different, now nine phases, so I can now I gotta have this 18 pulse, diode bridge and you can kinda see that on the on the slide here too. So I need, you know, this involves a lot of equipment. I need this auto transformer, I need a different rectifier bridge, you know, a much bigger one really, but it does do a really good job of yeah. So I’m not drawing current in big chunks anymore, I’m drawing current more often. Right? Because I’ve got this, you know, 18 pulse rectifier. So it really does a good job of meeting, you know, there’s a standard out there called IEEE five nineteen that’s referenced, that we’ll talk about just a little bit more here in a bit. And these also, work relatively well with the standby generator. Some of the negative things is, okay, you know, soon as I introduce that transformer and more switching, that reduces my system efficiency. And really the big one is this takes a ton of space to not only mount that transformer, but that, 18 pulse rectifier. I got a wire between all of that. So it ends up being a pretty substantial product cost in terms of component cost and and floor space cost. So, but you know has been widely used in the industry but a lot of metal, you know copper and iron, being used in that solution. Next IBT bridge and a DC bus much like the front end, front two parts of that AC drive that I showed you. So we’ve got kind of a the front end and a DC bus set in there. And what this really does is monitors the current and then really generates compensation current in opposite phase to offset harmonics. So this can be, you know, effective. The waveform looks pretty good. It’s unaffected by impedance changes because it’s managing the switches. But yeah, it tends to be you know more complex, it’s more expensive than passive filters, and again it becomes another device to install. Permissioning can be a bit of a challenge because you gotta get this tuned to obtain optimal performance. Although there are some self tuning ones out there that, you know, help take that burden away. But, yeah, you gotta install another piece of equipment that takes up think of it as, you know, two thirds of another VFD setting out there. Right? Shawn Tierney (Host): I would think it is also less energy efficient too because so we all know we have noise canceling headphones. They take power to generate a cancel waveform. Right? So we were already losing power because of harmonics, and now we’re generating another waveform to cancel out the harmonics. So it just seems like we’re losing more energy to produce this canceling wave. So it I mean, I could if this is the option that works, then you have the space granted, but it seems like it’s less energy efficient than maybe a passive filter. Right? But I don’t know. What do you I mean, two thirds more of the panel space as a as just the VFD alone. That sounds like a lot of equipment. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Give you a a fucking waveform. So I think that’s why people like it. But, yeah, it is definitely something that’s more complex. And and again, I think also there’s that commissioning aspect. And another thing is okay. So you get it set up on a given distribution system and it’s doing great. Okay what happens when I add a couple of more drives on this distribution system? It’s gonna change the dynamics and may need to do some recommissioning. So again it’s something that a plant operator would would need to you know pay attention to. So all those methods and and what I’m gonna get to next is something that’s actually in the G220. So all these previous method methods you know kind of works to a degree and each kind of has its maybe strong points and and not so strong points. But what I want to talk about now is something that’s called active front end. And this is you know, the g two twenty clean power drive is a version of this active front end. So active front ends. So what do we mean by that? Basically, it’s, you know, a sinusoidal input rectifier. And we are controlling the commutation or when we’re conducting energy. So with that we can get, you know, if done right we can have a high dynamic response. So we can respond to, changes for instance, you know, voltage dips in the distribution center excuse me, distribution system. And and because of that, then we we can also kinda get because we’re controlling when we’re conducting current, you know, it’s it’s near you unity power factor. So, yeah. These active front ends have been versions of these drives out there as well. What’s unique about the g two twenty is that it’s a two quadrant active front end. So power is flowing only in one direction. So in other words from the supplier line source, you know, through the drive to the motor. These are called clean power. So you hear the name clean power infeed that’s because okay the, you know, the infeed or line supply is is clean. This is known as something, out in the industry. They’re called Vienna bridge rectifiers. Vienna bridge rectifiers, something that was invented in the mid nineties. And basically, I I just put up a, you know, bigger diagram of kinda what’s going on here. There you can kinda see, okay, it is only two quadrant, but there’s this three level switching process that really reduces all these lower ordered harmonics. So this provides them a stable controllable. The advantage is five voltage DC output, so there’s no voltage reduction going on. Makes it ideal for high power applications like VFDs. And again, remember I mentioned earlier in the conversation here, electric vehicle chargers. So this is a technology that’s been popularized by some of the people. Yeah. Making electric vehicle chargers as well. So and really, yeah. What we’re doing here is using on smaller sizes MOSFETs or on larger sizes, you know, IGBTs here in the power section. Mhmm. And then using a very, you know, part of the sauce here is the control or of the pulse width modulation to manage power inflow is is really, as short a sentence as I can come up to describe what’s going on here. With this, because we’re only controlling power in one direction, there’s some ability, you know, we we don’t have as many switching losses. Again, because we’re only dealing with two quadrants, it’s a compact size, but it is non regenerative. And I I just what I’ll do here is I’ll put up, you know, a four quadrant comparison. So there are active front ends out there that are four quadrant, which has more of a full IGBT, you know, front end to it. The advantage of that is you do get power flow. It is regenerative. You do get power flow in both directions. But of course now I have higher losses because I’m switching in both directions and and you know, just a little bit less efficient. So really kind of coming back to what’s in the the g two twenty clean power drive is this two quadrant Vienna Bridge rectifier. Again because we’re only controlling power in one direction there’s some space savings that that come from that. So yeah and I’ll just add a two quadrant so that’s why this is targeted at you know, non regenerative load applications like pumps and fans. Right? And compressors. Those are not regen load applications. If you need something, you know, four quadrant that would be, you know, like think of a hoisting application or something like that. Maybe large centrifuges or something like that that has a lot of mass that’s been accelerated up and yet can capture some region on the D cell. But that’s kind of, what’s in the g two twenty clean power drive. So, Shawn, I’ll just kinda stop there and the and by the way, the waveform is fantastic. Just dialed that in there. So any thoughts or questions or what’s on your what’s on your mind there? Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. No. That’s important to know. So, you know, you got the two quadrant version in the Clean Power g two twenty. And the important thing here is you’re gonna get beautiful. You’re gonna get beautiful elimination of harmonics. You’re gonna have a beautiful waveform. But when you make this choice, you’re also opting out of, regen, like you said, like a hoist or a large inertia load. There’ll be no regenning, which in some cases, you’d be choosing a different VFD. That’s just a different application. Right? Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Exactly. Shawn Tierney (Host): But I think most VFD applications, at least the ones I’ve seen over the years, do not have any regen. Right? They’re your standard purpose, even your high performance VFDs are not doing regen or anything any any type of regeneration capabilities. So I think for most applications, that’s not gonna be an issue, but it’s important to point out. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): What do you think? In the you know, some people we’ve asked questions about, why didn’t you just make it four quadrant? Well, let me ask you, Shawn. What do you think’s less expensive to make? A a two quadrant or four quadrant version? Shawn Tierney (Host): I got a feeling the four quadrant may be twice as much. Yeah. Well, at least that part of it. Right? The front end. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): And when do you think would, you know, take up more handle space Shawn Tierney (Host): at two quadrant or four quadrant? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): So, I mean, it’s it’s a very targeted, again, targeted at those, applications that are non region load applications, which Yeah. I’ll I’ll submit that’s at least 80% of them, you know, what’s out there. So if so, again, this really just to emphasize, it’s it’s a Vienna bridge rectifier. So, you know, some uniqueness there. But then really, also the software side of it, you know, building the, algorithm to manage that power flow and assure efficient operation is what’s been done in the g two twenty drive. And yeah. With regards to nice looking waveforms, it’s a lights out, you know, the best looking waveform out there. And matter of fact, I’ve got one more slide here that shows just, you know, development team took one of our g two twenty products, you know. So this is what’s shown over on the left side here is just your standard our, you know, waveform. You can see kind of the double humped waveform there. If you put a passive harmonic filter in front of the g two twenty, you know, waveform starts to look pretty good. But now if you just use a clean power drive, you get a very nice looking waveform. All that worrying about what the effect of harmonics how they’re generated you don’t have to think about that anymore because right at the input terminals of the drive you know, we’re giving you very very low turn harmonic distortion. So and and also that near unity power factor. So that’s really the advantages of the clean power drive. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, and I you know, just for the audio audience, I mean, we’re looking at the standard g two twenty, right, your standard drive. You’re looking at a total harmonic distortion of, let’s say, 33. Well, you put that passive harmonic filter on, that’s standard drive. Now we’re down to around 4%. Right? But if you have a lot of those drives, that may not be enough. Right? So with the clean power g two twenty, we’re down to under 2%, 1.9 total harmonic distortion. And you see that I know you guys listening can’t see it, but you can see that in the waveforms. All the viewers who are watching can see the waveforms definitely the improvement as you go through each of these options. And, again, you’ll know if you need clean power. Right? I’m fairly sure that, you you know, if you don’t need clean power, you don’t need it. Right? But if you need it Right. And and this is something that I think we’ll see more and more because quite honestly, I mean, power fact, we all know how that affects your utility bill and how our company thinks about that. And so we can accept more stringent controls over time as, yes, the systems become more advanced. You know, you’re gonna get dinged if you have really bad power, you know, the quality of the power. If you’re causing problems down, you know, for the rest of the block or for the rest of the, business park, they’re gonna start tracking that. So let me turn it back to you, Evan. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yep. We’re kind of to the end. I’ve got a couple of slides just to summarize what we’ve talked about here. You know, the the g two twenty is, a new drive for us. It’s our next generation SINAMICS product. And really this drive was designed and built on four pillars of digitalization. So in the form of you know, having a digital twin capability to help engineers shorten design and engineering efforts when sizing a drive system, and then tools to optimize operation once it’s up and running. You can see another pillar of secure, meaning security, with regards to cybersecurity and and safety that protects people from machines and protects machines from people as well and other sinister actors. And ease of use, you know, next generation product starting with a clean sheet of paper. Okay. Some things were done with regards to selection, configuring, commissioning, training, things like that with making the product as easy to use as possible. And then this fourth pillar of being sustainable, you know optimizing manufacturing resources and materials used, even operational efficiency during the life of the product and then even considering you know the end of the product life cycle. So all of those things designed into the Sinamics G220 and then if we look again specifically at the advantages of the clean power drive, you know that nice clean low low total distortion that complies with the harmonic standards, near unity power factor, and again, in that space saving design. And just to kinda give you an idea, I’ve I’ve been telling you it’s small, and I think I maybe let the cat out of the bag at the beginning of the, presentation as well. Yeah. Here’s here’s kind of a table that shows dimensions, and there’s that 200 horsepower drive that I referenced. So, yeah, this this technology, you know, it’s not like buy the drive and buy buy something else to add on to it. It’s all in one package. And, yeah, that that 200 horsepower drive, you know, 31 inches tall, less than 12 inches wide, and about 14 inches deep. That’s a 200 horsepower clean power drive that would yeah. You wouldn’t have to think about all this harmonic stuff. And I’m not gonna put up a chart that shows competitor a, b, and c and and our product next to it. But you can take that table and go find go look at other people’s solutions and you’ll see yeah. It’s it’s a very compact device. So that’s kind of the point of that slide there, Shawn. And, yeah, really my last slide then just kind of I have drawn heavily from a white paper that my counterpart, Nikun Shah, wrote. So we’ll give you a link to go download that, white paper. That discusses a little bit more. I’ve kinda mentioned on and off, I triple e five nineteen. That is by far the prevalent standard in this country for, yeah, describing what harmonics are, different medication techniques. And then, you know, there’s tables in there. It’s like, okay, if you’re being called to meet specification at triple eight five nineteen, you know, here are the harmonic current distortion levels and voltage distortion levels that that you need to meet. So that’s all laid out in that white paper. Yeah. And then we’ll give you a a link to our website, to the g two twenty catalog. I have another very useful feature shown that I’ll give you a link to is the seamless product selector where you can go and, you know put in a part you know very quickly pick a part number and then get to some you know CAD models of it. And then I’ve mentioned that energy savings calculator at all. So Shawn that’s kind of what I had for today. I hope that was interesting to you and, more importantly, interesting to your audience. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I just wanna remind the audience that we had you on to talk about the g two twenty a while back. We also had Jackie on that go through commissioning the one twenty and the two twenty. So if you’re kinda curious, how do you do that in TIA portal? Because I’ve never done that before. So Jackie came on, and she walked us through that for both of these two models. We also have received some samples from Siemens. So we will be, trying those out them ourselves here in the in the studio. Don’t know. Don’t have a date on that. We’re a little backed up here. But, definitely, they’re right in front of me every day, so I don’t forget about them. So we’ll be doing that as well. And, then we’ll make those available to our in person students who come to the school as well as we’ll add those as lessons to the online course over at the automation school. But so lots of stuff. We’ve had a lot of coverage. If you have any questions, check out this white paper. I’m sure we just touched the surface of what’s in there. And, of course, Ivan and all his colleagues at Siemens would love to hear from you. And, Ivan, let me, pass it back to you for the final word. Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yeah. Just thank you so much for having me on, Shawn. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Ivan for coming on the show and giving us that very technical presentation, which I totally enjoyed. I hope you guys did too. Also wanna thank Siemens for sponsoring this episode because you guys know I love to really stem completely ad free and available to the entire public. So with that said, I also wanna thank you for tuning back in this week. If you think about it, please give me a thumbs up or a like or a five star review. That is the best way for me to find new vendors to come on the show. And with the exception of Thanksgiving week, we should have a show every week up until the last two weeks of the year, and we are already recording shows for next year. So I’m excited about that. If you know any vendors you think we should be on the show, please reach out to them. I’m working on a new media guide as well, and so, we’d love to have them on the show this coming year of 2026. So with that said, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

In this episode, we connect with Steve Wetzel, a member of IEEE and principal applications engineer with Southwire Company, one of North America's largest wire and cable manufacturers and the sponsor of this podcast, to learn more about how the cable connecting a VFD to a motor might be costing you thousands of dollars in premature motor failures, unexpected downtime and interference with other equipment.

Send us a textPower problems don't announce themselves—they show up as dead fans, stressed birds, and energy bills that creep higher every month. We invited superintendent electrician Cody Pommer of Interstates to walk through the electrical decisions that quietly decide whether a poultry site runs smooth for years or limps from fix to fix. Together, we unpack where farms get into trouble—moisture, dust, untrained panel work—and the simple, proven steps that keep people safe and equipment alive: correct NEMA ratings, low-point drains, GFCI protection, better cable selection, and a disciplined maintenance plan.Cody breaks down why electrical rooms pay back in longevity and safety, and why grounding and bonding are non-negotiable in wet, high-dust environments. We dig into smart controls and VFDs that fine-tune ventilation and lighting, explore modern fire detection with aspirating systems, and call out the shortcuts that cost the most—skipping VFD-rated cable, ignoring voltage drop on long runs, and leaving new equipment to soak in the weather. We also talk resilience: generator strategies that share load across houses, peak-shaving to tame demand charges, and design choices that make future add-ons cheap rather than painful.Looking ahead, we connect the dots between reliable power and better data. AI is accelerating everything from egg counting accuracy to anomaly detection and design workflows, but it needs clean signals and thoughtful integration to shine. For smaller and mid-size barns, we highlight accessible control options that unify ventilation, feed, and lighting with mobile monitoring—practical tools that deliver immediate clarity and long-term savings.If you care about flock health, uptime, and a utility bill that doesn't spike when the weather does, this conversation is your blueprint. Subscribe, share with a producer who needs a safer setup, and leave a review with your top electrical headache—we'll tackle it in a future show.Hosted by Brandon Mulnix - Director of Commercial Accounts - Prism ControlsThe Poultry Leadership Podcast is only possible because of its sponsor, Prism ControlsFind out more about them at www.prismcontrols.com

Join the Refrigeration Mentor Hub here Learn more about Refrigeration Mentor Customized Technical Training Programs at www.refrigerationmentor.com/courses This episode is the first of a four-part CO2 series, starting off with a dive into the basics of CO2 controls with Kevin Mullis, Head of Product Engineering at Clade Engineering Systems. This is about returning to fundamentals, even for seasoned technicians, to ensure a thorough understanding CO2 controls, programming, wiring diagrams, meter readings, and step-by-step troubleshooting techniques. Kevin shares lots of great tips and advice for refrigeration technicians to enhance their skills and confidence in handling CO2 refrigeration systems. In this episode, we cover: -Introduction to CO2 controls -Refrigeration controller fundamentals and basics -Wiring diagrams -Importance of proper tools -RDM controllers -Probes and transducers -Relays and voltage -Voltage and relays -Testing and troubleshooting relays -Universal inputs and outputs -Analog signals and transducers -Identifying and tracing probes -Practical tips for wiring and safety -Compressor circuits and VFD's -Sequence of operation in CO2 systems -Analyzing a zero zone drawing Helpful Links & Resources: Follow Kevin on LinkedIn Clade Engineering Systems Episode 315. Mastering RDM Controls, Live Commissioning & Networking Essentials with Kevin Mullis Episode 299. Basic Refrigeration 101  

This week Shawn Tierney hosts Michael Warren from Wieland Electric in studio to demonstrate the SAMOS PRO Safety Controller in episode 15 of The Automation Show Season 2: #Automation #IndustrialAutomation #InsightsInAutomation Watch The Automation Show: Samos Pro Safety Controller Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Show Notes: Thanks to Michael for coming out to our office, and to Wieland for sponsoring this episode! For more information about the SAMOS Pro Safety Controller, see the below links: Wieland Electric Safety Products Free Download of Samos Plan6 SAMOS PRO SAFETY CONTROLLER Safety Training Wieland Electric North America Contact info Note: The video edition was originally released on 07-22-25, and re-released with Audio Podcast Edition on 08-21-25. Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Everybody, welcome back to the show. Sean Tierney here from Insights and Automation, and we have a special show for you today. I have Michael here from Wheelan, and we’re gonna talk safety PLCs and all kinds of great stuff. But before we jump into that, you know, I haven’t had Wheeling on the show before. So, Michael, I’m hoping you can give us a well, not only introduce yourself. I got to meet him this morning before we started recording. But, if you could introduce yourself and then maybe tell us a little bit about your company, and then we can jump into why we’re here to talk about these good looking products. So let me turn it over to you. Michael Warren (Wieland): Okay. Great. Well, thank you, Sean. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. And, yeah, my name is Mike Warren. I’m a business development manager for, Whelan Electric, North America. I’ve been, with Whelan a couple years now, but, I got over twenty years of experience in the industry. I have a couple of TUV certifications under my belt. I have a TUV functional safety engineer and also TUV certified functional safety expert. In addition to that, I do consulting for safety applications. I teach safety classes. I also teach the CFSE class. And, I do things like, review machine safeguarding, standards, CE marking, risk assessments, remediations, lockout tagout, basically everything that, is involved in in the safety world. These are some of the classes that I cover. So, what we’re doing today, Sean, is to talk about, our product. Okay? The the Samuels Pro Compact. And the Samuels Pro Compact is a safety PLC. It’s known, by various names, safety controller, brick PLC, whatnot. But it is a compact, as the name implies, safety controller. And in a safety chain, it really is, the keystone to a safety, system. There’s always, an input device. Okay. We follow the ILO system. Okay. I for input devices. L for logic, in this case, the Samuels Pro Compact. And an output devices could be contactors, which I have here, in the demo itself. Okay. It could be a, OSSD, inputs from a VFD or robots. Okay? So those qualify as output devices. But the input device is for detection. The large device makes a decision, and the output device executes. And the primary purpose of an output device is to remove energy in an emergency or a, an intrusion, situation. So let’s take a look at the product itself. Okay? The Samuels Pro Compact, again, is occupying this spot right here, in the demo itself. It’s 45 millimeters. Okay? Very compact. The base system is set up with 20 inputs. Okay? 20 devices. Okay. 20 inputs, it would be, 10 safety devices. Safety device is always redundant. There’s two points per safety device. So that device is already set up for 10. There’s four safety outputs on it. And the version that I have here in the demo is actually an upgraded version including motion. So not only will it, set up and accept the inputs from some of these safety devices that I have here, for example, like light curtains, I have door switches, I have an e stop, I also have an analog position switch right there that’ll detect the input. Other than those devices, I also have a safety encoder attached to one of the axes, in the demo to do motion detection. Not only are we detecting people, but we’re also detecting shaft movements, okay, with the encoder itself. Shawn Tierney (Host): And that’s optional. So there’s two models, one with motion and one without. Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s absolutely right. Alright. And I wanna point out that the software is free. It can be downloaded easily. It can throw it on your laptop. And the nice thing about it, and we’ll get to the software. We’re gonna show a little bit about it, that you can use the software without any hardware attached to it yet. Okay? You could literally can build your safety system in the virtual sense, test it out, check to see if it’s, working properly. And, again, when we dive into the software, you’ll see a little bit, the nice, additional features you get. Things like a schematic and a report, and also show you the modules that are actually part of the system itself. Okay? Now, we talked about, the communications on this too. Okay? We have three onboard communication, protocols. Okay? Onboard, we can, work with PROFINET, Ethernet IP, and Modbus TCP. Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, nice. Michael Warren (Wieland): There are additional gateways that you can get to add additional, cons. Okay? That includes CAN open, PROFIBUS, and EtherCAT. So, again, we have a nice way of communicating with other protocols, and let’s face it, other manufacturers. And in the safety world, the manufacturer’s controllers, the actual, automation controllers are not to dictate to the safety system when to remove energy or not. It’s the other way around. The safety always has a a precedence and a priority over the controls. Its purpose with these communication gateways is to inform the control systems of what’s going on in the safety. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I mean, most of the time, your your master PLC is gonna already have an HMI or SCADA system. Correct. So they’re gonna wanna display that information. So if you have those especially the the three you have built in, I’ll be able to probably the biggest three Yep. You know, according to all the surveys and industry reports and whatnot. Having those built in means I mean, you cover most PLCs standard PLCs. You’re gonna be able to give the data to them. They’re gonna be able to know in their program. They’re They’re gonna be able to let their operators know using the existing equipment. So very cool. Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. And in this world, we, fully understand that, it’s a it’s a mix and match. Okay? Okay. Rare do we find customers that are using a single brand for everything. You and it’s necessary that, you know, one brand of light curtains works with the controller and another brand of door switch and whatnot. They’re all kinda compatible. And the communications, though, is very, very important, because, again, they’re not, operating, independently and in a silo. Shawn Tierney (Host): So if I understand that correctly, so we’re seeing your products, Ian. I really don’t know much about your company and what products they make, but I can see you make a lot of products here. So you’re saying that you don’t just work with the Whelan products, you work with other people’s safety products as well. Absolutely. Third party light curtain or third party contactor or safety contactor or third parties, safety push button. Michael Warren (Wieland): Absolutely. Okay. Whelan, itself is a, it’s a German company. Okay? Okay? They’re famous for their terminal blocks. Okay? So really we put them on the map, you know, many, many years ago. But, there’s two pillars for the company right now. One is safety products, and the other is distributed power. And, again, this is an important product for it. This is really our keystone and our leading product, as a logic device in a safety system. So a lot of time and energy and development has been put into this, to make it, a world class and, leading with all the features, like you said, including communications. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I think too the fact that the audience can go out there and grab a copy of the software and actually simulate their system, that gives them a you know, because maybe they maybe they’re like me. Maybe they haven’t used your system before. So they can actually build a system, put it together, test it in the simulator without spending a dime. They’ll be like and, hey. They go to the boss and say, hey. I got a proof of concept here. Let’s let’s call Mike and say, we can’t come to call out and and show us more. Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. No. No. As a please call. By the way, I appreciate that. No. Like I say, it is a, a wonderful benefit. It helps people try to determine because, let’s face it. Not everybody knows and understands safety unless you do this, day in and day out. Yeah. You’re not up with the latest standards. You don’t understand simple things like an e stop here requires a, a contrasting yellow background to it. Something as simple as that. And, again, the, the the software itself is smart enough where you put these devices together, and if you configure it wrong, it bounces you out. And the reason that it bounces you out or says that you can’t, you’re not permitted to do that particular because it’s always traceable back to standards. Okay? So the standards are embedded in the configuration, and the algorithms that allow you to drag and drop and put particular devices together are based on, on the standards themselves. Okay. So the controller itself, in a safety system, is of the highest rating. Okay? In the PL system, it’s PLE. Okay? That’s, that’s that is the highest, that you can, arrive to in in the PL system. It’s PLE, SIL three, or CAT four. Okay? They’re all being used in in today’s industry. People, communicate, about safety either in cats or seals or PLs. But the latest and greatest, in, going forward really is the, the the performance level, PLE. That’s the highest level. But, again, it follows basic, safety fundamentals that if you attach, devices, in a chain, a safety chain, and you have PLE, PLE, PLE, and you have one device, that’s PLD or PLC, for example, a little lower than the whole system always reverts down to the lowest in the chain. It’s the weakest link basically. The weakest link. Yeah. Okay. So, again, you’re starting out with a a PLE safety controller, and now the weakest link is not the controller. It tends to be something else. Good. Okay? I mentioned also that, the motion control. Okay? And it has a a safe motion, embedded in the software, and we’re gonna take a peek at these a little bit. Six different TUV function blocks. Okay? Certified function blocks. Okay? They are, a safe standstill motion. Okay? Or or basically a zero RPM, determination. Okay? And all of these function blocks in the motion world are designed to detect shaft motion, shaft speed, shaft position, okay, and shaft direction. All the rest of the safety devices we have on here are for human detection. Okay? Hands, like light curtains, hands going in, door switches, gates opening, things like that. To your point, Sean, that, yeah, you say, you know, we have compatibility with lots of other brands and lots of other products. We don’t have all the safety products that are available here in front of us. For example, safety mats. Okay? Okay. Safety mats can be fed into this. Okay? It’s just another input device. Mhmm. Okay? Safety scanners can be fed into this. Okay? The form factor of a safety scanner is a little different than light curtains. Okay? But it’s basic same principle. Okay? Rope pulley stops. Okay? Two hand controls. All of these different devices are available in the library. Okay? And, again, we’re gonna show the software here in a little bit, and you can configure it, as you please with whatever brand, you’d like to use. And, again, some people are are stuck on certain technologies. For example, safety mats are kinda older technology. Mhmm. But they’re still viable and a viable solution in a lot of applications, and we see them all the time. So, obviously, the safety controller, will take those, as a, a viable input. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. A lot of times I’ve seen that the choice there is really I mean, I think most people wanna do the light curtains, but I think the mats, the rope pulls, the the scanners, I mean, they all address applications where the light curtain just doesn’t isn’t the best fit. So it really comes back, and you tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems the the choice there, a lot of times, comes back to, not always. I mean, there’s preferences. They want they all work. Right? Yep. But the scanners usually being the most expensive in my experience. But, yeah, a lot of Michael Warren (Wieland): it there’s there’s some applications you just have to have the rope pull. You something else won’t work. Yep. No. You’re absolutely right. The application typically drives the choice of devices. And, one of the things that, I go through when I do safety, machine safeguarding classes is this should always be be based on risk assessments. Yeah. Really looking at it, holistically, the whole system, the usage, the severity of the potential injuries, the frequency, the chances of these injuries type of happen. And, again, we put the best recommendations going forward, based on when we see applications. But it is by application by application. Rarely do we see, two that are exactly the same. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And the risk assessment, I mean, if you’re an expert, you have the training he has, you you maybe you can do your own. But a a lot of us don’t have that training. And so to pick the right products, you gotta know what the risks are. And you don’t wanna spend thousands and thousands of dollars on something and then find out, oh, like, the biggest risk you didn’t address because it just didn’t come to mind. So the risk assessment by an expert is so huge in these type of applications. Again, some of the people, maybe they went to your training, maybe they got certified, and they can do their own. But, that’s usually a big part of a part of a project. Michael Warren (Wieland): It is. It is. And, it’s important, again, to have at least, you know, some background. Okay? It isn’t really an arbitrary, choice of devices. It’s usually a thoughtful process thinking of the input devices and the risks to people and, considering the the, the collaboration of people and machinery together. This is where we have to try to protect, humans near the equipment. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s gone on the days from a 100 years ago where, you can take those risks. I know a lot of people still do, but, you know, every time somebody gets hurt and there’s a new light current going up or a new god going on something, the go on are the days where a sign says, don’t touch or you may die. That’s not sufficient these days. And a lot of that’s driven by the insurance companies because they don’t wanna have to pay out for people getting all these injuries. Right? And I think we all know people who are missing hands and thumbs and and and body parts because they got they got stuck in a machine. So, I think this is a good trend. And these products, I I I think when you guys see the software, they’re super easy to use as well, so it makes a lot of sense. Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. And let’s not forget, you mentioned insurance companies, but let’s not forget government oversight. Okay? OTA Yeah. True. Is, here in The United States is, really the watchdog for safety. And, not only are there, costs involved with machine downtime and injuries and insurance payouts, but let’s not forget, fines, levied by, OSHA. Okay? And, once you, unfortunately, once you get into, OSHA’s radar, they keep they can’t they tend to keep an eye on you. And, you don’t again, it’s it’s this kind of scrutiny you really don’t want. Poor publicity, downtime, and, again, that’s reputation. I mean, at some point, it boils down to company reputation. Okay? But, speaking of software, why don’t we take a peek at the software here, and let me show you a couple of details about it. Okay? This is the basic work screen right here. I have the software, called up. Again, it was a free download. I downloaded it online. And, again, I wanna create a basic system. Okay? I’m not gonna replicate this whole system here. There’s a lot of devices here and there could be conditions where I have multiple safety zones, which is something that you could put in the software. But I’m just gonna do a very basic configuration. I I call it the five minutes to safety setup. And what’s the simplest safety device to wire up and set up here? It’s the lonely estop. Okay? What we’re going to do is we’re gonna take an estop, put it into our, our our workspace here, and wire it up, run it, make sure it operates properly. I have the proper, wiring, I have proper configuration, and then we’ll see how the software guides us to, that completion. Okay? So, Sean, we’re gonna grab a device here. Okay? I’m gonna go ahead and grab an e stop. And you’ll notice here, I have a choice either a single channel or a dual channel. We always wanna pick dual channel. Safety is always redundant to contacts per. Okay? So I grab that. Okay? Now as part of a safety system, once I, initiate an emergency stop, I have to be able to reset it. Okay? That’s an important part of the actuation of the, of the estop. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna grab a reset button. Okay? Right out of the library. Now pop it right over here. Now the next thing I wanna do is I have to have the actual contact, the initial initiation of a switch itself. Okay? So I’m going to come over here to the switch, and I’m going to grab a dual channel switch. Just drag it over here. Okay? So I have my emergency stop. I have my reset, and then I have the actual switch, the initiation switch of the system. And what’s missing? My output device. Right? So I’m gonna come over here, and I’m gonna just grab some contactors. Okay? Quite similar to what I have in the demo itself. And again, dual channel. I’m gonna grab that guy right there. Okay? So input device, logic device is the Samuels, controller here, and also the software called Samuels plan is right in front of us. Now we connect. I’m connecting here to there. I connect here to here, and then I connect the output to the contactors. Okay? Boom. I’m all set up. That’s it. Now why don’t we run and initiate, a safety function here? Let’s test it out. That’s how you’re gonna really know now. Right? I turn the simulation on. The background goes green. So I’m in a simulated mode. I’m in a virtual system right now. And as you can see, I have no hardware set up. I’m just using the software and the tools in the software itself. Okay? I’m gonna start the safety. Okay? Start the simulation. You can see the counter go up. This is the the time, okay, that I’m run actually running the, the simulation, and I have to turn things on. Right? I have to initiate them. Okay? I turn that on. You’ll notice here I have this flashing display, display reset request. I turn that one on, and then I actually do a reset. It’s as though I just set up an estop, and I say, okay. Let’s initiate it. Let’s get it started. Okay? Now I want you to notice the lines. Right? From my estop to the reset to the contactors are all green. That means I’m up and live, and I have a living, breathing safety system right now. So how do I know if it’s working properly? Well, let’s just trip the estop. It would be as simple as hitting the mushroom here and depressing it down. Since we’re virtual here, I’m gonna hit the estop right here. My green lines disappear. Okay? I’ve effectively executed a safety function. I, pushed the estop here, and I lost my connection to my contactor. I now have removed energy from that contactor. Okay? But and now if I wanna go through a a reset, sequence, go back on, you’ll see the flashing light. I turn that on, turn that on, and now I have my system back up again. Okay? Very easy. And, again, I I tell people that, this isn’t really a a programming system. This is really a configuration, and you’re just dragging and dropping. Now let’s take a look at some of the other tools that we have here. I’m just gonna pause the simulation for a second here. Okay. Once I actually do this and I know I have a living, breathing, simulation system. Okay? I shut off the simulation for a second and let’s see what the software has shown us or what done for us. Okay? Number one, the module. It actually shows us the module that it’s selected to accomplish the function that we wanted to do. Okay? This particular model, okay, the non motion one, you you mentioned that before. This is a non motion because all we’re doing is an e stop detection here. And if you take a look, you’ll see some very interesting points. Okay? Notice you’re gonna see an e stop symbol right here on I one and I two. It automatically selected, I one and I two to do that connection. The switch, the reset switch itself, I three and I four, and on the output side, I have q 1 and q two. They’re my contactors. It actually shows up right on here. Okay? And, as you can see on the demo itself, we have flash we have lights that are on. We have a communication light on the Ethernet IP port that’s flashing. These would be, your indicators on here telling you the condition whether you have good communications, you have good connections, or in in the event that you have a safety trip. Okay? Some of these indicators will go red. And that’s how your your first visual when you approach a, controller like this and you see that you have a safety trip, you would have the red indication on here. Okay? So that’s the module that that came up automatically in the software. Next is the report. Okay? It’s gonna generate a report on our configuration. Okay? And it’s nice because there’s a lot in the report itself. If we scroll down, we end up with a CRC control number. This is actually a time date stamp that identifies the unique configuration of the, project that we just created here based on the time date, and it’s unique. Okay? And when you go ahead and build a big system and you get a machine commissioned, okay, the CRC number is important to identify the material condition and the safety, the report that is generated, the safety level, and it’ll be identified here in the report itself. Okay? Okay. List of materials. Okay. We have, not only a bill of materials. Okay. Scroll down. There’s our controller again. That is in the report. Again, it’s a replication of what we saw in the software. There’s a bill of materials, the actual devices that are part of the safety system here. Okay. And we scroll down a little bit more. If we ran some diagnostics and more elaborate systems, we can run diagnostics and collect that information and actually have it show up here in the report. Okay? General information, things like CPU cycle time, for example, CPU usage. Okay? Isn’t identified here. Now we go down a little bit further and this is a really really cool part of the system that I like is actually the wiring diagram. We get calls all the time. Hey, how do you wire this? They say, you know, what do I connect? And I said, well, you know, it’s a input device, log device, output device. Yeah. But how do you connect it? When you set it up in the software here and you do the drag and drop like you see and run the report, you get an automatic wiring diagram. That’s all. So you don’t have to, you know, break out a pen and paper and draw up your wiring diagram. It’s already in here. And you can export this and put it into your master, wiring diagram. Okay? So those are on the inputs. Right? Okay? It’s my test policies. Okay? It shows my mercy stop and then also my reset switch. And on the output, I show my contactors. Okay? So, again, as you go through the whole report, it shows all the details or anything we configured. Again, we did something very simple. Just wired up an e stop to, actuate, a safety function, and we had the contactors to actually do something. The logic device makes a decision, and the contactors actually remove the energy. Okay? Now if we had additional things like, IO. Okay? This does have the ability to, have expanded IO. Again, we mentioned there were 20 IO points, resident, on the, controller itself. But if you needed more than 20, okay, we have additional safety inputs. We have additional safety outputs. We you also can attach through the backplane on the DIN rail itself, non safety IO. Okay? Things like the lights that are on here. Okay? Those aren’t really safety functions, but we do need IO points to actually run those. Shawn Tierney (Host): Is that what the gray module is? Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s exactly what that is. Safety. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Good call. And again, it’s, there’s not a really a standard that says that that they shall be yellow, but it’s kind of an industry convention. Yeah. Okay? There’s a difference between a standard convention and, yellow kinda calls out as a safety device and non yellow, for example, would be a, non safety, and that is a non safety function. So again, we have, additional, IO not only for, the safety but non safety. And, again, people tend to think that, the safety itself, can’t do a standard, operations and standard logic. But, I might point out here in the function blocks themselves. Okay? We actually have capabilities like that. Okay? In the software itself, okay, you take a peek here. These are just standard logic symbols. Right? Okay. I have a not, and, or. I mean, I can do a lot of features on here and really create elaborate safety systems. Mhmm. And again, a safety controller can do some non safety functions. It’s you just can’t go the other way around. A a non safety controller cannot be, utilized, for safety. Okay? But that’s all built into the software right there. And again, if we had additional if we wanted EtherCAT, for example. Okay? EtherCAT was not resident on here. We would add a separate, comm gateway, to that system right there, and it would show up in our report here. Additional gateways, extension modules, and any sort of logic that we had associated with the system itself. But, again, this report just gets printed up automatically. It shows, basically what we saw in the software that’s resident in here too. If you have to go back and make modifications, you’re obviously going to change the CRC number because every time you change configuration, you get a new configuration code. But, you do get a chance to basically see, and it’s a copy of, whatever that you had configured there in the report. So you have the report, you have the modules, and then you have your workspace. And, again, all of this was done virtually. All we had was, the free software downloaded, and we ran it, to run, the system for us. Shawn Tierney (Host): I should’ve asked you before you close the report. Do you get a bill of materials, like, the actual part numbers you need to order? Michael Warren (Wieland): Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I’m glad you asked that. Okay. Run the report. Open it up again. And our bill of material, Shawn Tierney (Host): let’s It’s usually a pretty big one too because, you know, you you’re not gonna be an expert like they are on their products or use any data tool to help you select which products you need, especially since you just went through and configured it all. And so there it is. There’s your bill of material. Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s the bill of material there. Okay? We have the controller itself. The card is, an SD card. Okay. Good point. We should mention this now. Yep. The, the SD card itself, okay, is, specially configured to work with the, this it’s not entirely big. It’s only a 512, megabyte, but it is required and this is where all of the, safety programs are actually resident. The nice thing about that is if you’ve had if you have multiple safety controllers in your facility and you have your recipes, resident on the card here, you literally can take this out and pollinate, literally go to each controller, install it, and then load up and have have safety programs. So you go from one controller to the other to the other, but the recipes are resident on the card itself. Shawn Tierney (Host): So what how about duplicating the program? If I if I’m an OEM and I have a bunch of machines. Right? And I just wanna duplicate the program. Can I use the card to do that as well from machine to machine to machine? Michael Warren (Wieland): Absolutely. You could do it card to card or if you did, you know, use your laptop. Okay? And you have the program on there. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. You save right to the card? You save it to the card. Yep. Okay. Without having the controller here, you can save right to the card. Michael Warren (Wieland): Save right to the card. Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, that’s a nice feature. Yep. Some people can’t do that. Yep. I won’t mention any names. Michael Warren (Wieland): So yeah. Like I say, the good news is, it does save to the card. The bad news is you have to have the card, as part of it. Shawn Tierney (Host): It needs to be the company. It needs to be a wheeling card that’s matched for that device. Exactly. The special call it out. Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. To close it out. And then again, the the rest of, the the bill materials is we have the e stop, the dual channel closer. That’s that’s just the software’s name for the reset switch and a set of contactors inside. But that is, to answer your question, that is the, the bill material there. Did you have any questions? Well, you know, he gave me some Shawn Tierney (Host): of the most popular good. I have not well, I purposely as you guys know, I purposely don’t look at the companies the first time I see them because I wanna try to have a natural reaction like you will the first time you’re watching this episode. Yeah. So, in any case, Mike was kind enough to give me some of the questions that come in. So how about number one? Alright. So I’m gonna read number one here. What makes the Samos I’m sorry. What makes the Samos Pro Compact ideal for space constraint applications? Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s a great question. And, we touched upon this and it has to do with the actual size of it. Okay? As I mentioned, it only occupies, 45 millimeters, on a DIN rail. Okay? Great. And, itself is set up with 20 input points, meaning it’s 10 safety devices. And let’s say I had discrete relays. Discrete relays typically take up 22 and a half millimeters a piece on the DIN rail space. 22 and a half millimeters times 10 devices, okay, would be occupy the whole DIN rail here. Okay? For 10 devices using discrete relays. The beauty and the benefit of having a say a compact like this, it only occupies 45 millimeters. Okay? So you have all this additional space for either expansion modules or other products. For example, the controls themselves. Yeah. K. No one says you have to run the controls, okay, or for safety in a separate cabin. They oftentimes share the same space in in the cabin. Cabinet space is valuable. Very real estate is very valuable. So again, it only occupies 45 millimeters. It saves an awful lot of space, holds a lot of devices just by itself. So, there’s an advantage right there. It makes a quick and easy configuration. Shawn Tierney (Host): Now you talked about something. I always thought this was a little odd. So you have an existing PLC, and then the the word comes in that whatever equipment you’re adding to the line or maybe it’s been reconfigured and you need to add a safety PLC. A lot of times, companies will not they’re like, we’re not gonna mess with the part that works. We’re gonna add in a separate safety PLC. And I think that’s unintuitive for people who you know, if you’re designing a brand new system, you’re gonna wanna design and get to buy a POC that’s a standard POC and a safety POC all in one. But I don’t think that’s that’s the opera. Do can you just share some of your thoughts on applications that you’ve seen over the years where they had an existing control system, but they needed to add a safety POC? And and that’s why they chose your product because it had to be totally separate from the existing system. Michael Warren (Wieland): Exactly. Exactly. You know, it’s it’s often nice to work on projects where you’re in the design, the front end. Okay? And you can have it all integrated and it all works quite nice. Yeah. Whatever you want. But, the the reality is that, you know, we’re called upon to add safety to a lot of older legacy systems. And, the concept that we always adhere to is really it’s a safety layer. Okay? And I really try in my classes, I try to separate control circuits from safety circuits. I call the control circuit the black circuits, and I call the safety circuits the red circuits. And the red circuits always have priority. Okay? And they have overreach, let’s say, of the black circuits to remove energy in an emergency situation. I mean, that’s what we’re that’s what we’re here to do. Right? We’re here the logic device is here to make a decision on an input. It could be either a detection of a hand or door opening or whatnot, or in the case of motion, an encoder signal. Okay? Identifying, over speed, going the wrong direction, has not reached a zero RPM state. Okay? That’s a a dangerous situation and it won’t open a door. It won’t unlock something until it achieves that state. So, to your question, we do a lot of applications where we have to put safety on as an afterthought. Yeah. Okay? And we work again with the controls, but we never integrate the safety directly. It always has a priority over it. And the idea is that the safety system will remove energy Yeah. From, whatever source. And when I say energy, it doesn’t have to be just electricity. Right? There could be kinetic energy. Mhmm. Okay? There could be Okay? There could be hydraulic energy. Okay? Their fluid power safety is just as important as electrical power safety. Okay? Quite honestly. Yeah. So those have a priority. It removes that energy, from the source, and then it turns around and it forms the control circuits. Okay? And this again, it’s it’s a little more painful and a little more complicated sometimes to add it onto a legacy equipment, but, it does get added, all the time. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And, you know, I know a lot of the vendors these days are only supporting the last, maybe, the six or seven years of software. If you have a multimillion dollar system that’s full of racks and racks of standard controls, you know, upgrading that, just even upgrading the CPU to get a safety CPU could be that could be more than than this entire project. Yeah. And I think that’s what I’ve seen is, you know, they don’t wanna update the software. They don’t wanna have to buy new laptops. They don’t wanna have to stock new spares. That control system is standalone and works great. And so they’ll whether they go with the same company or a different company or a wheel in, they they’ll add in the safety, the PLC as as a secondary PLC that controls the safety that’s integrated with the safety because that big expensive system, they can’t touch it, and they can’t afford to upgrade it. Just as a standalone, trying to upgrade that would be would be, really overkill. So and that’s what I’ve seen. And you guys tell let us know in the comments what you’ve seen. Now am I way off? You know, let let us know in the comments, and I’d love to hear what your thoughts are. But let me pitch it back to you, Mike, and, after that interruption. Sorry. No problem. Any other questions by chance? Hey. I have another, often asked question. How does Samos Pro Compact reduce programming and commissioning time? Ah. Michael Warren (Wieland): How does it do that? Well, let’s start off with everybody’s favorite word. It’s free. The software is free. Okay? Truly. Easy to download and, as we just, showed us, easy to configure. And, quite honestly, the complaints for a a lot of system, setups and a lot of software packages is the complexity of using it. And, slowly but surely, software is evolving to the point where it’s very graphical and it’s all drag and drop. Okay? Yeah. And as you saw on the library, all the ingredients are there. Okay? And even if you select the wrong thing and you try to you drag and drop, you know, the output of one thing into the input of another thing, and if it bounces and it won’t accept it, you know you’re violating or you’re not setting it up properly. So slowly but surely, it’ll explain to you. And what you can do in the software too, if you ever have any questions, I should have mentioned this when we were looking at the software, was you can right click on any of the modules themselves, and it automatically goes to a help screen and you get all the details on that device. And if there are variables, if there are variables available to change the features on that. For example, like a a an or device. Okay? Or an and gate. Okay? You can pull it up, drag it into the screen and say, well, it’ll default to, to two. And it said, well, I need, I need three. I have three. Okay? I need this and this and this. Okay? You right click and you have a variable and a drop down and you can add another input to that. Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, that’s cool. Okay. I love how you’ve combined the configurator with the programmer. Yeah. So now it’s all in one. So you get your bill of materials. You also get to test the program. You get the simulator built in. Very cool. Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s right. And to, cut down on commissioning time, again, a lot of this work can be done prior to actually receiving. So you have a concept, a safety concept. You do a risk assessment. You say, okay. I need the following input devices. I need this logic device. I’m gonna attach to these output devices. And there’s time for that to come in. Okay? And you don’t have to wait for those to come in. Okay? You can actually get the software, start putting all those pieces together and setting up the system prior to the, hardware actually arriving. So, your commissioning time, you don’t start your commissioning time when the hardware shows up. You’re literally done before the hardware is done. It it comes in. That’s awesome. Yep. Yep. Any other questions, Sean? Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey. I got another one right here. How easy is it to connect Samos Pro Compact to existing control systems? I think we know the answer to this one. Go ahead. Michael Warren (Wieland): Gateways. And again, what we don’t have resident, on board, the the Samos Pro Compact itself, we have additional, gateways. Okay? CANopen. We have EtherCAT. That’s quite a popular, gateway protocol these days. We’re able to add just add an additional card to that and have that compatibility. And as you saw on the software, it showed up. Okay? Mhmm. When you add the cards, the card shows up and that protocol shows up. So it’s ready as a, an EtherCAT module, in an EtherCAT based system. Shawn Tierney (Host): So You said that it has PROFINET, ETHANIP, and Modbus TCP built in, which I think is so cool. Yes. I’m such a fan of companies that are doing that. But do you have to do something in the software to tell it which one you’re gonna use? Michael Warren (Wieland): No. You do not. In the software itself, it does especially when you’re using the virtual system, it does a detection, a health detection. Yes. Actually, that’s how it works. And then, again, you can go in and make a a a slight or small adjustments. You can actually get, addresses, through the software itself. So Oh, nice. It’s it’s not again, it’s you’re not, programming, you’re configuring. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. Michael Warren (Wieland): It’s it’s a huge time savings, quite honestly. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. You want me to go to number four? Michael Warren (Wieland): Sure, please. Shawn Tierney (Host): Let me ask you this. Is it sustainable? I’m sorry. Is it suitable for safety critical applications in demanding environments? Yeah. We haven’t talked about that yet. Michael Warren (Wieland): Yes. The the the device itself, typically has, most electrical devices in the industry typically have, an IP 20, rating themselves. Yeah. So IP 20, it doesn’t keep out, a lot of moisture itself. And quite honestly, these are typically, put in, cabinets, themselves to protect them. Okay? But but, the, the cabinets themselves, can, experience, a lot of temperature variations. Okay? So, these are rated between a minus 25 c to, plus 65 c. Okay? So, again, they are, designed for, harsh, cabinet temperatures, let’s say. Vibration, there are some, values of, it’s, it’s shock resistance. Okay? I had a customer the other day saying that, he was concerned about, the vibration that the cabinet was going to receive in a punch press. Every time the punch press, there was just this huge vibration. And we talked about the, the the shock resistance of the, controller itself and, mounting techniques. I mean, in my job as a safety consultant, as I mentioned, I look at things holistically. I talk about things that again, things like a shock mounting. Okay? We have the safety light curtains mounted here. At the moment, I have some standard, t fittings, okay, on the brackets, your standard ones. But if I was in a shock environment, I would, you know, talk with the customer and I would say, you know what? Based on what I’m seeing here, these obviously will handle a certain amount of shock by themselves. There’s no moving parts. Okay? So it does withstand a certain amount of shock, but, light curtains are notorious for being going out of alignment. And over a long distance, if one, the the transmitter, is, poorly aligned with the receiver, okay, and there’s some shock, then they’re gonna lose alignment with those vibrations and you’re gonna have nuisance stress. Nuisance tripping it. In that situation, I would tell people, I says, look, we have isolation dampeners. Okay? And a little rubber, grommets that you can actually put between the hardware and give a little bit of, a shock resistance to the light curtain themselves to help maintain. These are the kind of, little, advice, nuggets that we, deliver when we talk about a system, a holistically system, because we understand. Like you said, you know, some of these environments are pretty harsh and demanding. And the controller, as we mentioned earlier too, is a PLE. So the controller itself will never be, you know, the, the weak link in a safety system. There are some other devices. For example, in the motion, world, when we use a, a Samus motion and we use, the TUV function blocks for motion themselves. In addition to those is a vibration toolbox in the software itself. Okay? And that helps fine tune and take out nuisance vibrations that you’re trying to detect pulses from an encoder. You’re not trying to detect, other vibrations. Okay? Now the good news is that you can invoke these things in harsh harsh environments. Okay? You will knock down okay? According to the standards, you do knock down your PLE to PLD. Okay. But PLD is quite, is still is quite impressive and and robust. And again, the controller tends not to be the weakest link in a safety system. But great question. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I’m just seeing something else here too. What is the four amps for? Is that each output’s four amps or Michael Warren (Wieland): No. It’s the high switching power. That way you don’t have to use actuators. Okay? You’re able to have that. So, again, they they tend to be, kind of a high power on the output side of things, and it reduces the need for additional relays or any any sort of additional devices, for that. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. How about question number five? You ready for that one? Sure thing. Encoder types. Does it have to be a Wheatland encoder? Michael Warren (Wieland): I get that all the time. Actually, no. Okay? It’s just looking for a standard HTL incremental encoder, and, it and in in fact, the people are using, non safety encoders too. Okay? There are safety rated encoders and non safety rated encoders and they can use it. The good news is you can use a non safety encoder with it. The bad news is it does degrade the PL level. Okay? You can get a PL level, e by using, safety rated encoders. Again, redundant. You can do two tracks. You do four tracks. However you need. And again, I I gave the example about, shaft, shearing and trying to detect whether or not you have a broken shaft. We mount an encoder on both ends and match and, tune up those two signals together. Because soon as you have a deviation, you know you have a shaft breakage. I think we were pretty successful in showing not only, the fact that it’s it saves a lot of space on the DIN rail for the number of devices it’s able to manage. Okay? It, the input devices, again, can be varied. Some of them are here, some of them are not here. But, a lot of typical devices, that get applied. And again, it’s not brand specific. Okay? It’s quite agnostic. Okay? Most of the safety devices in the industry work with our controller. As I mentioned, the the Wieland Safety Controller is our own product. Okay? So it’s our own design hardware and both software. So when we have upgrades and development, again, the upgrades are free. Okay? We we send out, and anytime the software gets over, there’s a point release, whatnot. Those are free. Okay? And, we know a lot of people in the industry, charge, for software. There’s licensing fees and whatnot, and, that never happens, with, the wheel and controller products. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, could you wake up the HMI? It it looked like the screen was very well designed. Would you mind tapping the HMI? Yeah. So the HMI is good. So let’s talk a little bit about, like, aside from this, what are the products do you make? I mean, you make a safety POC. It looks like you also make an HMI. Michael Warren (Wieland): Yes. Yes. I’m glad you asked that. By the way, some of the, non safety type products, are actually on here. As you mentioned, the HMI itself. Okay? It’s a touchscreen, and, we have various sizes on it. And what you’re seeing here on this demo is a representation of a CNC machine. Okay. K? It gives a little bit of a story behind the devices that go into this. So for example, I turn it on. I’m running it. Okay. Okay. You hear my CNC running? Yeah. Oh, yeah. There we go. Very robust CNC. Now I go to open one of the doors. Okay? Okay. Not only will it stop the motion, but it’ll also show me on the HMI which particular door I opened up. Okay. Did you see that? Yeah. Yeah. That moved. Okay. And back with that. Shawn Tierney (Host): You see HMI updating as well? Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s right. So the up, the HMI updates itself and again, it continues to tell the situation. And that’s what’s nice about sending the output of this, over this, Ethernet, port here, to the HMI itself that when you have a trip. Okay? Look, I have several safety devices here. I have light curtains. I have three door switches here. I have, a an analog, position switch, a distance switch here. I also have an e stop here. Various devices. If I have a trip, okay, and if this was a real machine in a facility, I’d have a light stack and I’d have a light flashing. You would come up to the machine saying, which device tripped? I don’t know. You can look at the HMI and either have a graphical display of the machine itself or a table. Okay? It would show all the devices and it would have an indicator of which one it is. So you’d come to the machine, you say, oh, I see what it was. It was that door switch. I close the door and then I have to reset it. Okay? A safety system requires a manual reset. You just don’t close the door, the machine starts up automatically like that. Okay? And then I did a reset, and then I also did a machine start. And now And my CNC is back up and running. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s excellent. That is excellent. So you’re more than just safety PLCs. Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s right. No. We do the safety PLCs. We do the light curtains. We do all these door switches. We have three grades of door switches here. The simplest technology is standard key, door interlock. Okay? Yep. And a standard, fork, key interlock. The switch goes on the frame. The key goes on the door. Open the door, key comes out and it indicates to the system that there’s an intrusion. Now in addition to that, those are contact switches. Okay? We have this version here. We have a secondary version that’s a little bit bigger that has a solver in it, and there’s a locking, guard locking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. K? Therefore, if I have an application where I want to go into the cell, but the cell presents a hazard and the hazard has to either cool off or there has to be a a coast down period, say 60 or whatnot, A timer is used inside the controller and once sixty seconds elapse, it sends a signal of the solenoid to release the door lock and allow you to go into the cell. Okay? Keep it. And then there’s other applications where non contact is preferred. And we have two versions of non contact here. Okay? One is a coated magnetic. Okay? There are several codes available, and so you can’t take another, magnet and fake it out. Shawn Tierney (Host): Big thing. Right? It has to be coded. Yeah. Michael Warren (Wieland): Bypassing. Yeah. Bad bad word in the safety world. I get calls. People say, hey. I have door interlocks. I keep finding the keys in there, but they’re not attached to the, to the door anymore. And I said, okay. And we can improve the robustness of the safety system by switching out keyed interlocks to a coated magnetic switch. And these coated magnetic switches do not work with refrigerator magnets. Okay? It takes a coated actuator to actually close this. But, people that have a lot of these can find another matching actuator and fake these out. And we’ll get a call. Mike, I’m getting my magnetic switches being bypassed. What can we do? The next level of technology up is RFID. Oh. Okay? RFID is high coded. Okay? High coded. And and if you high coded means that you have a thousand or more codes. And if you have a thousand more codes, nobody is gonna find another matching actuator to fake out the switch and try to bypass it. Shawn Tierney (Host): When you buy it, do you get it just random from the shelf or Michael Warren (Wieland): You get it initially random and then there’s a sequence where you, cycle the power to do and change the codes. Oh, okay. So you can actually get multiple codes. Okay? Okay. That and again, so we start out with the basic technology. The next step up is magnetic, and the highest level technology is RFID for door switches. Okay? So, and let me see. Now in addition to all of this, okay, you’re gonna notice that, I have Shawn Tierney (Host): Turn the speed down. So Michael Warren (Wieland): Oh. Oh. I went I went back. Sorry. Reverse the direction. That’s okay. Or we coulda we coulda just, put our hand in the light curtain or whatnot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But, in addition to the products, the safety products and the HMIs, we sell power supplies. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, we have our own power supplies. As a matter of fact, I always advocate people that when they have a safety system is to have a dedicated power supply. Yes. They’re not really expensive and for the peace of mind. Okay? And for the robustness and integrity of the safety system is to have a separate power supply running the safety system alone as opposed to sharing it from some other things. Okay? Yeah. You don’t have to worry about spikes in the system. You don’t have to worry about, in rush currents or whatnot. And, again, it’s dedicated and it won’t interfere with the functions of the safety because let’s face it, you’re trying to maintain, say PLD or PLE safety system. And, the the best thing that you could do is, it make the power supply independent. Okay? It makes the safety system robust and safer. Okay? You always have an eye towards making, the application as safe as possible. Now, in addition to, the HMIs, the power supplies in here, just within the system here, some of the other products that Whelan offers are distributed power systems. Okay? And as I mentioned in the beginning, Whelan is famous for their terminal blocks. Yes. Okay? And again, our catalog is full of, industrial automation, pieces. We really try to a bridge, from device to device in the automation world, all these filler, and detail type products, gateway switches. We have managed and unmanaged switches too, by the way. Okay? Oh, Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. You have switches as well. Michael Warren (Wieland): We do. We do. I invite you to, take a look at our website, wheelen,uh,-electric,uh,.com. And, it has a lot of good information, and you’ll see the full catalog of information. Today, really, we were just kinda covering, safety, but it’s really the tip of the iceberg of the, Wheeling portfolio. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And we will conclude not only an end of show slide here so you can see all the important stuff. We’ll also include all these links in the description. So wherever you’re watching, you’ll have links to everything we’re talking about so you don’t have to go and hunt it down and, like, you know, how do I spell wheel end? And all the links are there. We’ll put the slide up on the screen as well so you guys can see all that good information. And, Mike, with that, was there anything else we wanted to cover today? Michael Warren (Wieland): I think we covered it, pretty thoroughly. I wanted to make sure that, I showed you the software because, you know, a lot of manufacturers, create the box and a little the little safety PLC. And, quite honestly, the the magic of the PLC itself isn’t the hardware, isn’t the 45 millimeters resin case itself. It’s the actual software. How easy to use, how comprehensive it is, what information it’ll do for you. Okay? And again, we showed that we have a, workspace, drag and drop, library, pull the devices in. We have motion, we have presses, we have combustion technology, muting. We have a lot of different libraries, function blocks, certified function blocks to drag into the workspace. It creates the report. And, basically, again, it just shows you, the creation of your system short of hardware. Of course, when you hook up your hardware, you do a synchronization. Okay? And now you can make your tweaks. You may find that your virtual system was better than the hardware list that you created, and you may want to upgrade that at some point. Okay? The nice thing about a controller is it’s infinitely repurposable. Okay? You program it one way, one day, and if you add another device, that’s not a problem. That’s easy to go in the software, add another device. Okay? I subtract a device, change out devices, whatnot. It’s easy enough to use. So, yes. Again, the Samos controller, is a leading product for us in the safety, product portfolio for Wieland. And, again, we lead off with, our our software, the Samos plan software. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I appreciate it. Just that short demo you did really helps. Like, I feel like I could get in there and start doing stuff. You know, when you open something up for the first time, if you’ve never seen a demo of it, it can be like deer in the headlights type of and I’ve been there many times myself. So thank you for not only talking to us about the hardware, talking to us about your company, but also giving us that software demo as well. And I wanna thank you for coming out and driving all the way out here, three hours to get out here to do an in live. He doesn’t Mike doesn’t know this. He’s the first one to come and do a live. I had to clean up all last night. The place was so messy, but he was actually the first vendor to come out and do a live, and I really enjoyed having him here, medium, and the preshow and, and whatnot. But I also wanna thank Wheelan for sponsoring this episode so there’ll be no ads on it. Didn’t you guys enjoy having no ads during the episode? We don’t make a lot of money from those ads. It’s pennies. So thank you to please tell your, people to thank you very much for sponsoring this episode so we can bring all this information to the audience without any nasty ads. And with that, any final words? Michael Warren (Wieland): No. No. Thank you, Sean, for having me. Appreciate your hospitality, and, you did a great cleanup job here. It looks wonderful here. And it’s a it’s a great, for, format here for us to, show off our product here. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, thank you, Michael. I hope you come back sometime. Michael Warren (Wieland): I’m looking forward to it. Thank you. Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Show, Podcast, and Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Join hosts Brett Wetzel and Kevin Compass in this laugh-out-loud episode of the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast as they tackle the intricacies of programming a Micro thermo 700 series system. From configuring light dimming settings to VFD compressors and setting up discharge groups, the duo navigates through the complexities while sharing hilarious anecdotes and tech hiccups. Perfect for HVAC professionals looking to enhance their programming skills, this episode combines valuable insights with plenty of humor and camaraderie.

Join hosts Brett Wetzel and Kevin Compass in this laugh-out-loud episode of the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast as they tackle the intricacies of programming a Micro thermo 700 series system. From configuring light dimming settings to VFD compressors and setting up discharge groups, the duo navigates through the complexities while sharing hilarious anecdotes and tech hiccups. Perfect for HVAC professionals looking to enhance their programming skills, this episode combines valuable insights with plenty of humor and camaraderie.

We talk to Matt Asbill from Motion Industries he blows our minds with all the wealth of knowledge the guy has about VFD's trouble shooting and applicationsIn this episode, dive deep into the technicalities of HVAC systems with guest expert Matt. Sponsored by Western Meyer Industries and Parker Sporlan, we touch on the importance of differential pressure monitors, the viability of using VFDs during various seasons, and the significance of contactor cycles. Learn about common issues like motor failures, control transformer burnouts, and the specifics of pulse width modulation. Matt shares insightful tech tips for troubleshooting and maintaining efficient HVAC systems, ensuring you stay ahead of common pitfalls. Whether you're dealing with random over current trips, phase imbalances, or programming quirks, this episode is packed with valuable solutions. With a mix of expert guidance and some light-hearted humor, this is a must-watch for every HVAC technician out there!

Shawn Tierney meets up with Jackie Stokes of Siemens to learn how to commission VFDs using StartDrive in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Everybody, thank you for tuning back in. In this episode, I actually meet back up with Jackie Stokes from Siemens to learn how to use a start drive to commission Siemens drive, specifically the g one twenty and the g two twenty. Although, I’m sure some of the other drives are very similar. And this actually came from a request from a viewer who’s who asked that we have somebody on the show us that. And because I’m not the expert, I reached out to Jackie and she agreed to come on. So I’m looking forward to that. Now we’re gonna cover the g one twenty. The g two twenty, we’re gonna cover how to change Siemens drives to be Ethernet IP instead of PROFINET. They have Ethernet IP built in, which is really cool. And then we’re gonna cover some free training they have coming up. I will include those links below as well as the links from Jackie below in the description. You should see that on all platforms. And I do wanna reach out to you and ask for a favor. I’m coming up on my ten year anniversary of doing this full time, and I was hoping that you guys could help me out to reach a 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Now I know a lot of you listen on Apple, a lot listen on Spotify, a lot of you consume the shows over at the automationblog.com, and I appreciate you all. But I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could hit a 100,000 subscribers over on YouTube by the end of the year? And maybe if we do, we could have a celebration. We could do a live stream, do some q and a. I’d love to hear what you guys thought over I actually started the channel twelve years ago. I was doing a part time to start, and I’d love to know what your favorite episodes were or what episodes what kind of episodes you like to see in the future. And so if you guys I know even if you’re on another platform, if you do have a YouTube account, if you could swing by, it’s at insights I a. That’s a lot shorter than insights in automation. So I shortened it up, I think it was a year ago or two years ago. So it’s at insights I a. Again, if you guys are up to it, I’d love to try to hit a 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year to celebrate my tenth year doing this full time. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump into how to use StarDrive to set up and commission Siemens VFDs like the g one twenty and g two twenty. Jackie, welcome back to the show. I’m so happy to have you back on and here to talk about using, Siemens VFDs inside of TIA portal. Now we’ve talked about your VFDs so many times on the show over the years, and but we’ve never actually, like, put one in TIA portal and tried it out. And I had actually had a a viewer ask about that. So thank you for agreeing to come back on. And just in case, some of the audience members didn’t watch the previous episodes where you were on, Could you quickly introduce yourself before jumping into our topic for today? Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Sure. And thanks for having me back on the show. So my name is Jackie Stokes. I am a marketing programs development manager at Siemens. I work in the motion control business unit. I’ve been in the business for, oh my goodness, I’m getting old, like, fourteen years now. So I but I’ve been with Siemens for about three and a half years. So, yeah, we’ve talked about, our drives family. I think most recently, we talked about the Synamix g two twenty drive with Ivan, one of our product managers. But, yeah, happy to be back and talking about how to integrate our VFDs into portal. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I appreciate that. I mean, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so when we’re going to integrate our first, you know, drive into TIA Portal, it’s kinda like, well, what do we do? And so I wanted to have you on. I I could have fumbled through it myself, but I’m like, why not just talk to the experts? So let me turn it back to you, and, let’s go ahead and jump in. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yeah. Sure. So, I have just brief slides before we get hands on. I have a demo unit with me, but just wanna cover what we’re talking about. So we’re talking about our general purpose VFD. It is called SINAMICS g one twenty. So Sinamics is the name of our drive family, and g stands for general purpose. So that’s kind of the decoder ring for Sinamics g one twenty. It does come in a few different flavors. It comes in a modular version version, which we’re using today. It comes in a compact version, which is g one twenty c, And it also comes in a distributed or on machine version, which is, g one twenty d or a similar drive, g one fifteen d, and that d is for distributed. So the modular version of this drive, comes with a control unit, a power module, as well as an operator interface. So you can kind of see on the pictures to the right, what this looks like. So the control unit can be separated from the power, module, and then the operator interface can be separated from the components as well. So we’re using control unit two forty e Dash two p n dash f, and then we’re using a power module two forty dash two IP 20. The firmware version, I believe, is the latest. It’s firmware version 4.7 service pack 14 hotfix four. And the software, we are using start drive. StartDrive is our software for commissioning drives, and it’s in TIA Portal. So if you don’t, have a TIA Portal license, to program our PLCs, for instance, StartDrive is free. So you can download StartDrive and it will open essentially in TIA Portal. It’s just that if you’re using the free version of StartDrive and you don’t have a license for TIA Portal like programming the PLCs, you won’t be able to program a PLC in it, but you will be able to commission your drive. So that’s the little distinction between Start Drive and TIA Portal. There is also a Start Drive Advanced, for advanced features and programming in the drive that you do have to pay for, but, most of what you can do and what we’ll do today, you can do in the free version of StartDrive, and we’ll give you a link to that, how to download StartDrive. And, of course, this is just one way to commission a drive. You can also commission it with that industrial operator panel, the IOP dash two, which you can see on your screen. We also have a basic version of it, and then we do have a smart access module which generates, a Wi Fi hotspot, and then you can, you know, step away from the drive, connect on your phone. So three different ways to commission that drive. But if you’re a portal user and you’re using a Siemens PLC or maybe you just, you know, want to do this in software, it’s really easy to do as well. So I’m going to give you a brief overview of what we’re doing, so the procedure, and then I’ll jump into the software and show you what we’re doing. So basically, basic, we’re going to start off with opening TIA Portal, creating a new project, we’ll go online with the drive via accessible devices. This is where we have the opportunity to assign a name and IP address to the drive, and then we will add the drive to the project. So we are going to upload the device as a new station. So once it’s in the project, we’ll go online with the drive. We’re gonna use a commissioning wizard, which is gonna step us through all the parameters and settings that we need to commission the drive. We’ll do a motor ID and tuning and optimization. And then finally, we’ll just kind of take a look at the parameters and other features that we can see in portal. So with that, I am going to switch screens. So now we are in, my other computer, which we’re gonna use to program the drive. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna open TIA portal. I already have it open, but you can see the icon here. We are gonna use TIA Portal v 20, so this is the latest version of Portal. And this is what it looks like when you open Portal. What you wanna do is create a new project. So I’m just gonna hit create a new project. We’ll call this g column 20. Okay. So if you’ve never seen TIA Portal before, you have a lot of different options, and it can be slightly overwhelming. So I recommend we go to project view, and that’s a good way to just jump into what we need to see, for our commissioning. So the first thing we wanna do so this is what portal looks like. A lot of different windows, a lot of things going on. At the end, I’ll talk about some free training we have. If you’re unfamiliar with portal and you want to, just see what it looks like and understand all the windows and buttons and how to be efficient in the tool. But for today, I’m just gonna show you the commissioning. So under online access, I’m just gonna expand this on the left hand side. So this is our project tree. You can see we don’t have any devices here. You could add a new device if you wanted, but right now, we’ll just look at our online access. So these are all the things that we can access online, our communications. I’m gonna click up here, which is accessible devices. And up here, this is how we’re gonna find the drive. So on my computer, I am networked to the drive. So I’m connected to an Ethernet switch on the drive itself, and then my computer has two Ethernet ports, and the port I’m looking for is this, gigabit network connection. So this is the one that’s tied to the drive. You may have to adjust these settings on your own PC in order to see the drive. But, once you have these configured, you know, you can see different options here. You’re gonna hit start search, and as we’re waiting, one thing to keep in mind is you will need to configure your network adapter settings so that you’re on the same subnet mask as this drive. So, just make sure your PC is configured properly. Otherwise, it won’t be able to find the drive. So here we are. We see this G 120 Drive one. It has this IP address, one nine two point one six eight point zero point one, and you can see the device type here. So, earlier I mentioned that control unit, that CU two forty e, that is the drive we’re connected to. So we’re gonna hit show here. We’re gonna highlight it, and then we’ll hit show. Shawn Tierney (Host): Now just for the audience who is listening, there is an option there to flash the screen. So like I showed you with the PLCs in previous episodes, you can do that with the drive as well. It has a little checkbox here. So if you had three or four drives side by side, you could make sure you connect it to the right one by flashing the screen. So go ahead. I’ll turn it back to you, Jackie. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yeah. That’s a that’s a good point. So right. I I have just one demo unit in my room, so I know what I’m connected to, but that is that’s a very good point. You can flash that little LED. So now you can see we have under online access, under this, gigabit port network connection, we have this g one twenty drive, and this is where we can go to online and diagnostics, and we can make some changes here. So you’ll see, we know we’re online. So this is another key thing when you’re commissioning drives or any devices within or working with devices within TIA Portal is making sure you’re online with the the correct device and and that you are online. And so this turns to orange up here, and you can see, like, online access here. So that’s an indication that you are online with that device. So we’ll go to functions here, and this is where you can assign a name. So if you wanted, we could call this drive underscore one. And then what you do is just hit assign name. And then, like, let’s say we wanna change the IP address to dot three, and we’ll assign the IP address. So we changed the name, we changed this IP address. If you double click on update accessible devices, you can see that our drive one drive underscore one name changed and that, the IP address changed. So that’s what we that’s what we’re looking for. So we just made those changes to the drive. Now what we can do, and, actually, once you change the IP address, you might need to cycle power. So I’m gonna cycle power to the drive. One second. But what we can do in the meantime is we can upload this device as a new station. So what this is going to do is it’s going to put the drive into the project and it’s creating this drive underscore one. And it’s giving us a little bit of a warning, but that’s okay. We’re gonna upload from the device. Okay. So now we see drive underscore one in our project tree. I’m going to kind of minimize this online access, and we’re gonna look at the drive up here so we don’t get too confused. So here, we wanna make sure we want to go online with the drive so we can make sure you so, you know, once you if you’re following along, you wanna make sure you select this drive, especially if you have lots of other things in your project tree, because you can go online with a lot of different things. So if you have I remember when I was first learning, portal yeah. If you don’t have the right thing selected and you select go online and you’re going online with something else, that’s not quite right. So make sure you have it selected and then hit go online up here. It’s this little orange connector. And then you’ll see this green check mark. So that indicates that we are online and connected and the drive is happy. So now we’ll go to the commissioning wizard. So under here, we’ll double click commissioning, and we have a few options here. So you see the commissioning wizard. We see control panel, motor optimization, and this backup and restore. So we’ll start here with the commissioning wizard. And then, basically, it’s just gonna step us through how we wanna set up this drive. So we have some options here, the application class. So, there’s expert, which means that all the options are available in the wizard. There’s standard drive control, which again is the most common applications. And then we have dynamic drive control. So these are more advanced applications. So you can kinda read through this. And if you had questions about what I should be using, you can click this little green arrow here at the bottom for online help. So we’ll just click standard drive control, and we’ll hit next. And this is where you have the option. You need to tell it, are you connected to a PLC? If you are, where that ramp function is. Is it in the PLC, or are you gonna do it in the drive, or is it gonna be a standalone drive, no PLC? So I’ll walk through this scenario with, standard drive no PLC, and then I can also show you what it looks like if you go the PLC route and how that configures. But a lot of the things are are the same. So you have an IO configuration here. You have some options. I’m gonna choose 12. As you can see at the top here, they’re predefined interconnections of the inputs and outputs. However, you can change them later. So, choose the one that best fits your application, but, again, keep in mind, you can change it later if, you change your mind or need to change something. We’ll click next. We are using this motor. So I’m just gonna keep this here, this IEC, and then two twenty volt. We do not have a breaking resistor, and we do not have a filter. Again, this is where you have the option to select a filter if you are using one, and then it’ll give you a few more. I’ll just show you an example. So if we had a a sine wave filter third party, you would have to input these values. But for this application, we’ll choose no filter, and then we’re gonna enter the motor data. So this is where you’re going to need to read your motor nameplate data, and then we’ll input the motor nameplate data here. So right now we have point nine seven, point one eight and kilowatts, and then 350 RPM, and then we’ll hit next, and then we’ll hit next. This is where, I wouldn’t don’t touch the current limit. I’m not gonna touch the minimum speed or maximum speed. You have the option here to change your ramp up time or ramp down time if you want. So just, for example, we’ll change these values here, and we’ll click next. You have an option to change the application, so constant loads, speed to dependent load, and then the motor identification. So if you want, inhibited, identifying motor at standstill, or motor data identification. So I’ll click, this option two here, and then it says that the motor data identification will be performed at the next time that the drive is enabled. And then we’ll hit next. And then here, we’ll save the RAM to ROM, so it’ll be saved in the drive. And then we’ll hit and you can see the summary up here. So, you have the opportunity, like, if you’re reading through this and maybe you mistyped your motor current, you can go back and, change that setting right now if you wanted. So I would recommend that you read through this, make sure it’s all correct, and then hit finish. So now we are saving to the eprom. I’m going let’s see what’s so it says maintenance required in lower component. So we’re gonna look at diagnostics here. So you can see, sometimes you wanna you know, if this is unhappy, you kinda wanna see what’s going on. So we’ll go to this online and diagnostics here. Diagnostics, general. Okay. So you can see, you know, we have our name of our drive and the part number, but let’s look at active faults on alarms. Okay. And what it doesn’t like, the motor data identification activated. So it basically, it’s looking for that motor data, and that’s why it’s it’s giving us this little maintenance required. So what we can do is we’ll go back into commissioning. We’ll go into motor optimization here. And so once you click on it, it’s gonna give you a warning. This motor identification is performed once the drive is enabled. So we’ll click okay. And then what we can do so first, what you can we’ll hit, activate here. We’ll click accept, and then we’ll switch on. And then our motor ID is done. And you can see here, it has switched from that, kind of wrench icon to this green checkbox icon, which means that we did a good job. Shawn Tierney (Host): So it went through and, identified the motor. It applied power to the motor, and I couldn’t see what was happening with the motor. Did it turn the motor at all, or did it just supply power to it? Or Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. So it just supplied power to it. So and you can see here the the following parameters are determined or changed when the motor with with the motor data identification. So this is what it’s looking at. And we did a stationary measurement, so it did not rotate during that measurement. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): And then we can deactivate control. Yes. Okay. And then we can look at the control panel. So this is kinda cool. This allows you to test the drive in TIA Portal. You know, we didn’t write any PLC programming. We haven’t, you know, since I have this demo unit, it’s wired up for these particular, you know, little switches that I have on it. But Mhmm. Regardless and independent of that, we can actually, you know, kinda jog and turn on the drive and just test it out. So I’m gonna hit activate master control. And again, it’s gonna give us a warning because the drive can move. So just be aware of what you’re doing. It wants to make sure you’re you’re okay with this. So I’m gonna hit accept. We can give it a speed set point, so we’ll give it 200 RPM, and then we can give it a forward command. We can tell it to go backwards. We can increase the speed. And, you know, you can jog forward to this momentary push button here. And yeah. So it says a nice way to to kinda test it out right here. And then we can deactivate the control. And so and then once you’ve done this, you know, you can go to backup and restore. So this will save RAM to RAM. We can save it here. It’ll save RAM to RAM. One thing that I should have done when I was first starting out, and that is restore to factory settings. So I won’t do this now, but you can you know, if you get in a situation where you do need to restore to factory settings or, you gotta drive from somewhere else and you need to restore it, you can do that within TIA Portal. So we could do that now and then and then redo the commissioning. So occasionally at least in my experience with the demo units, sometimes they come in and you don’t know what someone has done with them. Sure. So you wanna start with this. But since I’ve been playing around with this demo, for the past few days, I kinda know what’s in it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And that would be important too if you took the if you’re repurposing it from one application to another, you definitely wouldn’t wanna wipe out everything, restore it to the factory defaults before you, before you use it on a new application. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. And that is something, that’s something you can do in, that online access area. So once you’re you know, so here, when you first saw that drive before you upload it as a new station, you have that ability. You know, again, it’s in that commissioning menu. It’s it’s mirrored up here too. Yeah. But you can go there and do that backup and restore. So that’s the best practice, again, if you’re repurposing a drive. But if it’s out of the box, you know, it’s already at factory default. So once your drive is in a good state, you’ve done your commissioning, you’ve saved RAM to ROM. What you want to do is you want to make sure your drive is selected, which it should be, but we’ll just go offline here. And then what you wanna do, just to be sure so your project should match what was in the drive, but, a good best practice here is to upload from the device. So that means your project will match whatever is in the drive right now. So this is just warning us, this Telegram configuration, but we’ll hit upload from device. And then we will save our project. So that is, how you make sure your project now matches the drive. And then if you wanted, you could, you know, have another drive that you’re connecting to, and you could then download to that device, but we know the project matches. So that was a good overview of commissioning basic commissioning for Synamix g one twenty. Our newer drives look a little different. The commissioning wizard is different. So we’re coming out with our next generation of Synamics drives, two drives to look out for. One is our motion drive. So it’s a servo motion. It is the Synamix s two ten, and then we have a new drive, the Synamix g two twenty, who Ivan, our product manager for that product, was on the show about a year ago and talked in-depth about it. But the whole product family sits a little bit higher than the g one twenty in terms of, capabilities and performance. So it’s not a successor to the g one twenty. It’s it’s a complement to the product portfolio. But I’ll just give you an overview of what that looks like. We can since I don’t have this demo myself, right now, I’m gonna add a new device. So, again, another idea if, let’s say, you wanted to get your project already so that once your drive arrives, you can just simply download to it. Another way to do this is to add a new device here in your project tree instead of scanning for it, you know, on the network, assuming you’re connected to a physical device. We can just add it here, do all the commissioning, set up all the parameters, and then once you get the physical drive, you can download to that drive. So, as you can see here, on the left hand side, we have controllers, HMI, PC systems, drives. So it’s gonna let you add whatever you want to your project. I have it selected on drives, and we’ll name this, g two twenty. And then here, you know, we’re just gonna filter down. So you see all of our g drives here. The g two twenty is at the bottom. We’ll do g two twenty PROFINET also means Ethernet IP, and make sure the version, article number, and we’ll hit okay. Ah, so if you listen to Ivan’s overview of the g two twenty, one of the new features is its security. And when we say security here in this context, we’re talking about user security. So user management and access control, also known as UMAQ or abbreviated UMAQ. So what you have the opportunity to do here is to configure your security settings. If you want, you can also continue with low security settings. But this is what this looks like. I’ll just kinda walk through what it looks like. So start a new configuration, what it is. So if you’re unfamiliar with user manage management and access control, this is what it tells you you can do with this tool. So you can enable UMac for the project and prompt users to log in in order to work with the project. You can enable UMac for the drive and prompt users to log in in order to work with the drive via the web server and start drive. So one of the new commissioning options that you have with our next generation of drives is a web server. And, again, I don’t have the drive with me now, so I won’t show you the web server. We’ll just show you TIA Portal, but that’s what it’s referring to when it says this web server. So just be aware if you check these boxes, and then these later steps will go through, you will have to know your username and password or you will not be able to access this drive. So, just remember to save save your passwords, if you do yes. If you do go down this route. Now, the scenario of I lost my password, I lost my username, I can’t access this drive. How do I get around that? Well, the only way to get around that is you’re going to have to get a u sorry, an SD card and insert that into the drive and it will have just reset. Txt on it, so a reset text file. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. So there is a way. It’s you’re not totally, you know, in trouble there, but, you will have to reset the whole drive. So there’s no there’s no, secret way of getting around it. So if you do enable that, that is how you would restore your drive or get access to it again, and then you can see here. So, data encryption, if you wanted, you could do this, Activate user controls incomplete. Ah, okay. So it said it was incomplete because we did not specify a password, so we have to specify a password here. And I think it has some requirements for your password, so you just wanna make sure you remember this one. We’ll hit okay and then next. It doesn’t like this. I have to click I have read the information above. Yes. Okay. Click next. Username. So you could allow a guest to enable access to the drive. It’s up to you. Uses the anonymous user, so we’ll hit yes. Allow data exchange via fieldbus. So is the anonymous user as they is used for fieldbus communication. So again, just want to make sure you understand these settings. The SDI standard panel access, so we’ll allow the drive to be changed via the standard panel without a username and password, web server access, so again going through all the different ways to access this drive and making sure you are okay with how you’re accessing it. Data encryption, next, and then we will hit finish. So it’s pretty in-depth. Again, you if you don’t want to, you can skip the security settings. You can also go back and reconfigure them too. So if you’re just working on this project, you know, you don’t you can configure it later. So here, similar to that, drive one, which is the g one twenty, we have all of our options here. We’re gonna go to device configuration or yes. So we’ll look at our device configuration. You can see here, we have our Synamix g two twenty. We have a motor here, which we actually don’t have a motor. So let’s see here. Properties. Yes. So we just added the drive. We didn’t add a motor. So we can add the motor here. This is where we’re gonna enter our motor data, for whatever motor we have. So I’m just gonna make up some values. This is what’s on my current demo unit, so point seven. Obviously, you wanna look at your motor nameplate and make sure it matches, and then we’ll go to our guided quick setup. So little different look and feel, compared to what we did with the g one twenty. It’s giving us a warning here, so the device is not specified. Specify the device first. We can click on this here. So it wants a little bit more information on what drive we’re using. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. The power. Right? Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. So, again, since we’re, we cheated well, I wouldn’t say cheated. But with the g one twenty, when you have it, when you’re online with it, you can upload as new station, so it’s detecting what you have. Mhmm. But since we don’t have that, we’re making this up in the project. It needs to know, the information. So we’re just gonna pick this one here to satisfy the requirement, and now it’s now it’s happy again. So we’ll go back to quick guided startup. Yes. And our warning went away. I’ll just move this down. Alright. So connection to the PLC. Define connection. Actually, I’m gonna minimize this window here. Yes. Do you want to connect it? Will it connect to a PLC via Telegram? In this case, we’ll say yes. It won’t be standalone. It’ll be connected to a PLC. And then do we want the ramp function in the drive, or do we want in the PLC? We’ll say we want it with the drive. And then, you know, if you’re using safety integrated functions via Prophysafe, you can check that box. So we have made our selections here. Actually, let’s I wanna see green check boxes at the top. Okay. So we’ve made our selection and you can see the green box. So we we have done completed this step. So select the application, we’re gonna select speed control, we’ll go next. The operating mode, so similar to that g one twenty, it’s asking a standard drive control, dynamic, and you can see how this changes, or selecting other closed loop control modes. So we’ll go back with standard drive control and click next. Here are the limits. So again, that maximum and minimum speed, this ramp up time, we’ll change it to five seconds. Our limits has turned green. So again, we have an option here, this fieldbus with data switch over. You can delete all these connections if you want, but, this is just how your digital inputs are, digital inputs, digital outputs, analog inputs, and analog outputs are connected. So you have the option if you wanna get rid of them, or if you want to to keep them and modify them. So we’ll just keep them, and we’ll hit next. Shawn Tierney (Host): Graphical mapping there of each digital and each IO point to the actual value in the drive, where the previous drive, we had a bunch of items to choose from. We chose 12, which was the standard, you know, your standard inputs and outputs and analog values. But here, it’s very graphical. I like this. This looks really cool, and it looks like it almost looks like I can go in, like, the where it says no connection. D I four. Right? No connection. It looks like you could choose, like, a yeah. Look at that list. A whole list of parameters that you could choose to put in that spot. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. Exactly. You can get to this setting in the g one twenty. It’s just not part of the commissioning. Shawn Tierney (Host): So Okay. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): So but that’s a that’s a good point. So in here, in the, you know, in this newest generation of drives, the commissioning, you have the option to set this up here. But, yeah, it you’re right. You can do it in the g one twenty, but it it doesn’t prompt you right from the get go. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): I’m gonna go back to application setting because I just wanna make sure I you can show more data. Let’s see. Okay. Now that looks good. Next. Telegram. Here we go. So since we’re talking to a PLC, it wants to know which Telegram we’re gonna use. So the Telegram is basically that exchange of data between PLC and drive. It comes from, like, the PROFI drive, profile. So it’s kind of a a PROFINET thing term, I guess, I should say. So you want to know what I’m trying to say is you wanna know what each of these telegrams mean in terms of status and control words and the information being exchanged between PLC and drive. So we usually use well, I shouldn’t say usually, but we use, like, Siemens Telegram three fifty two, for basic, like, speed control. But you can choose any of these telegrams, and I would encourage you, if you’re not familiar with telegrams, to, you know, look at the table, see what what kind of data is being exchanged between the drive and PLC, so that you’re selecting the correct one. And you can change this later if you want. So so, you know, so if, if you make the wrong selection here, you can go back and change it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Now it looks like it wants us to update the, IO configuration now because we changed the Telegram, which would make sense. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Ah, yes. And, I’ll go back to that for a second. So if you go to this PZD interconnections and this and so this is, process data. That’s what the PZD kinda stands for. If we click on that, you can see here what, the Telegram configuration looks like. So you can see, you know, the alarm code, the fault code, current torque speed, and the control. And then that’s in the receive direction. So that’s just what it looks like here. K. And you’re right. So if we go IO configuration Yes. So you’re right. Since we are using Telegram three fifty two, we are not having these IO connections connected to parameters within the drive. Next. We’ll be prompted for this rotate and optimize. So again, we have this option, identify motor data, optimize PDs controller, identify motor data at standstill. So we’ll just keep that and hit next. And at the end here is our summary. So these are all the changes we made, similar to g one twenty. You can go through, make sure you set everything correctly, and then you would perform a download, except we, don’t have our drive yet. So you can’t quite do that right now. But what you can do, is you can save this. So you can save your project, and then once you get your drive, you can, go online with it and download to that drive. Shawn Tierney (Host): Excellent. I mean, it’s interesting to see the difference between the, the original one we looked at, the g one twenty, and then this model, the g two twenty, and to see how the the wizard changed over time. And it’s it’s just very interesting. This one seems to be more like like, it’s offering you more details upfront. And, but it’s good to know both because you may have a one twenty or a two twenty or some other drive, so understanding the different interfaces is very helpful. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. So now what I wanna show so right now we have this drive configured, to run with a PLC. We’ve have it configured for Telegram three fifty two. And then what we can also do so, like, say we’re in a scenario. Right now it’s configured all the drives are configured, for PROFINET out of the box this G120 and this G220. But let’s say we have a scenario where we need to configure it for ethernet IP. So maybe we’re using a non Siemens controller. How would you do that? So it’s a little different in the g two twenty compared to the g one twenty. So I just want to make, you know, our viewers aware of these differences. So what we wanna do in the g two twenty is we wanna go to this drive here. We’re going to hit properties. So we’re gonna pull up this window, so that we can see it while close out that commissioning window. So now we’re in the properties of this. And what we want to do is go to protection and security here. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): And ports and protocols, and this is the fieldbus and related protocol configuration. So this is where we can switch to Ethernet IP or Modbus TCP. We’re gonna switch to Ethernet IP, and then we’ll hit okay. And that’s all we had to do. So again here, you could right click. I think you can yeah. Right click and hit properties here, and then that would is how you find it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Nice. That was easy. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. Now what’s different is in the g one twenty, so we’ll go up here. It’s actually just a parameter in the g one twenty. Oh. So this is a little different. So what I do usually is I go to parameter view, and then I go to display extended parameters. So this shows all the parameters. And I’m gonna hit control f, so I’m gonna find it. And it’s parameter twenty thirty for field bus. Let’s go find it. And you can see here, you know, since we made this a standalone drive, it has no protocol, and this is where you can change it from PROFINET or Ethernet IP. Shawn Tierney (Host): Nice. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): So the big difference here is, like the g one twenty, the s one twenty, these all have a parameter, parameter twenty thirty, and you just change one parameter and it switches between Ethernet and PROFINET. In the newer drives, you have to go into the device properties, ports and protocols, and make that change if you wanna make it. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s good to know. It’s, I don’t think I woulda guessed that. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): It was something we learned when we got our new demos. So is there anything else? Shawn Tierney (Host): I think that’s enough to get anybody started. I mean, it’s always good. If you have to sit down with a new VFD, it’s always good to have somebody kinda walk through it first, and then that gives you the confidence to get in there. You know you could get something working. And I I don’t think you’ll ever get through one of these commissionings without having to crack the book. You’ll definitely wanna read any literature that comes with the VFD. There’s safety stuff in there you gotta know about, because you’re gonna follow NEC and all those other applicable, codes, but, and all, you know, safety safety codes as well. But, you know, I think, you know, just having somebody it’s one thing to read a book. It’s another thing to see actually somebody walk through it. And I know I feel a lot more confident, that I’m, you know, now going and trying something out than I would have before you came on and showed us how to do this. So I really appreciate you, Jackie, the time. And I don’t know. Was there anything else you want to show? Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Yes. I do wanna show, some resources we have, to get you guys started and, you know, help you on your journey to commissioning cinematics drives in TIA Portal. So if you are new to, TIA Portal, Synamics drives, just integrating maybe a PLC into TIA Portal, integrating a drive into TIA Portal, we have a really cool tool. So, or I should say a really cool class. So it’s TIA University. So they’re free expert led workshops, and self study courses. So there are some basic video series. Again, most of this is for, you know, PLC, TIA Portal. However, they do incorporate how to integrate a Dynamics drive into this. So if you’ve never opened up TIA Portal or if it’s been a while, I recommend you do this TIA Test Drive class. So it happens every month. It’s a full day. It is virtual instructor led, so you’ll be able to remote into a TIA portal project and follow along with the instructor. So you will get to be hands on, but you can do it from your office, from home, from wherever. Again, it’s a day long class. You can download the syllabus here and take a look. So that’s the TIA test drive. Gives you a really nice overview of TIA Portal and all the things you can do with it. We also have another class called Merge Logics with TIA Portal. So if you’re a Rockwell user, familiar with Studio 5,000, Logix Designer, and you have a a TIA portal project or a Siemens project coming up and you’re like, oh, I’m not quite sure, how to do that. This gives you context of TIA or this presents TIA portal in the context of what you’re used to in Logix. So if you’re familiar with Logix, the instructor, kind of translates that into TIA Portal for you. So if you’re used to one thing, this is what it looks like in TIA Portal. So again, if you’re, you know, familiar with, Studio 5,000, this will give you a really nice overview. Similar to that TIA test drive class, it’s offered every month. It’s a day long class. It’s hands on but virtual. So, again, we use a hypervisor. You’ll be able to remote into a virtual machine and, get hands on with the software. So I encourage you guys to, join one of those classes or both. And then I also want to I’ll give you these links, or rather Shawn will in the video. So this just kind of covers, all things, Dynamics drives. I’ll link to our website, overview of our VFDs and our high performance and servo drives, distributor DC drives, digital drive train, and then our tools and resources. So we have our Siemens product configurator, sizer, TIA selection tool, SINAMICS selector mobile app, drive connections or drive applications. Here I’ve added this Ethernet IP connectivity. So if you are using SINAMICS drives on Ethernet IP, this will give you all the resources you need to set that up, one, in the drive and then, two, we have add on instructions, EDS files, things like that to make your life easier. And then of course TIA Portal, Dynamic Start Drive, this is what this looks like. So if you do not have Start Drive yet you can download the latest version here And again, that, start drive is within TIA Portal and it’s free, so feel free to download it. And with that, Shawn, it’s been so great to show you all about, TA portal and commissioning, so dynamics drives in it. So feel free to reach out to me again. Shawn Tierney (Host): Jackie, thank you so much for, taking time out of your busy schedule to do this for us. I know, you know, a, an audience member, you know, asked to, us to kinda cover that, and I’m like, you know, and I’m like, I’ll get Jackie back on the show. So thank you for coming on and showing us star drive and how you know, even though it’s integrated in the TI portal, that component allows us to commission our VFDs, you know, upload from download to them, change parameters, you know, identify the motor, and just everything you walked us through was very helpful. And I’m hoping the audience guys, let me know in the comments. Did you think that was helpful? And, do you have any follow-up questions? I think we covered so much territory. I don’t have any questions right now, but I would be, I would be interested in knowing what the audience thinks. And, again, Jackie, thank you so much for your time and for showing us how to use stock drive. Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Thank you, Shawn. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Jackie for coming on and teaching us how to use stock drive. I’ve never used it before, so I really appreciate you’re coming on. And if there’s other things you guys wanna see, let me know. I’m have no problem reaching out to the vendors. Sometimes, like, great vendors like Siemens and Rockwell and Schneider and other great vendors, they come on and they’ll they’ll offer it. Sometimes I get crickets, but that’s okay. You don’t know until you try. So if there’s anything else you’d like to see, let me know. And if you do have a YouTube account, maybe you’re watching this on YouTube or you’re listening on Apple or Spotify or at the automationblog.com, please consider giving me a sub over on YouTube. I really would like to try to hit a 100,000 subscribers before the end of the year. It’s kind of a stretch goal, but, you know, this is my tenth year doing this full time, twelfth year since I’ve created the, created the blog and the YouTube site. And I’d really like to see if we couldn’t hit that. I don’t ask a lot. I you know, I’m not one of those people who like to ask for subs and likes and whatnot. I know you have to do it, but in any case, if you guys don’t mind, I’d love to try to hit that number. So if you can help, that would be awesome. In any case, with all that said, I wanna wish you good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. The Automation Podcast, Episode 240 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jackie for coming back on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode so we could release it Ad Free! Below you’ll find the timestamps Shawn mentioned in the intro, and helpful links  Jackie provided: Timestamps G120: 9:39, 14:59 G220: 28:09 Ethernet/IP: 43:41 Free Training: 47:59 Siemens VFD Links: SINAMICS StartDrive (within TIA Portal) for easy commissioning SINAMICS Low Voltage Drives website Resources for SINAMICS VFDs on EIP and integration with Allen-Bradley PLCs Resources for SINAMICS VFDs and High Performance drives Get started with TIA Portal. Free, one-day, virtual, instructor-led course Know Studio 5000 but not TIA Portal? Free, one-day, virtual, instructor-led course will guide you through TIA Portal, putting terms and practices into a familiar context Siemens documentation, technical support Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

How did you learn to set up a VFD? In this episode, listen to the journey of a new controls engineer and hear how new hires are learning today. Find out what training opportunities have the biggest impact and how to accelerate technical skills development. To learn more about Workforce Development Training Services, see:https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/support/workforce-development-training.html

Part 2 of the Keithley 2302 battery simulator repair of the VFD display. Just a follow-up on testing the actual VFD display itself to see if there is any fault that's not the VFD vacuum. 00:00 – Having another look at the failed Newhaven VFD dispaly module 05:37 – Measurign voltages 07:32 – Oscilloscope probing …

Repair of a Keithley 2302 battery simulator with junk bin parts. But it did put up a fight! Teardown video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LK8wduZsy0 Forum: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1664-repair-with-junk-bin-parts!-keithley-2302/ 00:00 – Faulty VFD display in a Keithley 2302 Battery Simulator 01:22 – Teardown 03:14 – The Display driver PCB 04:30 – Solder Sucking Sucks 05:26 – The VFD display module, a …

NOUVEAU - Abonnez-vous à Minuit+ pour profiter de Crimes - Histoires Vraies et de milliers d'histoires vraies sans publicité, d'épisodes en avant-première et en intégralité. Vous aurez accès sans publicité à des dizaines de programmes passionnants comme Espions - Histoires Vraies, Paranormal - Histoires Vraies ou encore Catastrophes - Histoires Vraies.

NOUVEAU - Abonnez-vous à Minuit+ pour profiter de Crimes - Histoires Vraies et de milliers d'histoires vraies sans publicité, d'épisodes en avant-première et en intégralité. Vous aurez accès sans publicité à des dizaines de programmes passionnants comme Espions - Histoires Vraies, Paranormal - Histoires Vraies ou encore Catastrophes - Histoires Vraies.

NOUVEAU - Abonnez-vous à Minuit+ pour profiter de Crimes - Histoires Vraies et de milliers d'histoires vraies sans publicité, d'épisodes en avant-première et en intégralité. Vous aurez accès sans publicité à des dizaines de programmes passionnants comme Espions - Histoires Vraies, Paranormal - Histoires Vraies ou encore Catastrophes - Histoires Vraies.

Goodwin quotes The Princess Bride, Brtini compares Snickett and Pierce's affinity for defining familiar words, ND reveals a deep dark secret, and Marjorie gets started on looking for clues about VFD.Show art by Castor Choate. To contact them, reach out to us at templeofreadingcircle@gmail.com. Music by Aleksey Chistilin. Find more of Aleksey's work on Spotify and YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cet épisode est réservé aux abonnés Minuit +.Vous souhaitez entendre la suite ? Retrouvez cet épisode en intégralité sur la chaîne Crimes Histoires Vraies l'Intégrale, ainsi que des centaines d'autres histoires et trois épisodes inédits par semaine, sans publicité et avec un mois d'exclusivité. Crimes, Espions, Paranormal, et Catastrophes Histoires Vraies l'Intégrale, sont disponibles dans l'abonnement Minuit +En cette fin juin 1976, une flopée de lettres anonymes s'abat en Isère et menace la venue d'un été paisible. Ces lettres visent d'abord une femme dont le mari n'est pas rentré du week-end, puis s'adressent à la presse locale, les maires de Grenoble et d'Échirolles, une commune de la banlieue grenobloise, les VFD, voies ferrées du Dauphiné, et divers établissements bancaires, antennes du Crédit lyonnais, de la BNP, de la Société Générale… Selon le destinataire, le langage évolue, certains reçoivent à l'entame du « Monsieur », du « Madame », tandis qu'élus et banquiers se voient taxés de « chiens de capitalistes ». A la ligne, on lit : « Nous avons enlevé deux de nos semblables qui sont vos esclaves. Nous n'hésiterons pas à les tuer si vous ne vous pliez pas à nos exigences ». En bas de page et lettres capitales, la signature : « les Brigades rouges – Groupe 666 »."Crimes : Histoires vraies" est un podcast Studio Minuit. Minuit est une chaîne de podcast française axée sur la diffusion d'un large catalogue de productions originales grand public. Affaires criminelles, Aventure et Histoire : Minuit raconte dans le détail des centaines d'histoires vraies qui fascinent des centaines de milliers d'auditeurs. Découvrez les autres contenus de Minuit par ici :Paranormal - Histoires vraiesMorts Insolites - Histoires VraiesLes Zéros du Crime - Histoires VraiesCélèbres et Assassinés - Histoires VraiesComparutions Immédiates - Histoires VraiesSherlock Holmes, les enquêtesArsène Lupin, les aventuresSurvivants - Histoires vraiesHistoires Insolites de Trésors - Histoires VraiesCatastrophes - Histoires VraiesSports Insolites Histoires VraiesLes Pires Dictateurs Histoires VraiesConspirations et Complots - Histoires VraiesEspions - Histoires VraiesEscrocs de Légende - Histoires Vraies Hébergé par Audion. Visitez https://www.audion.fm/fr/privacy-policy pour plus d'informations.

Today on MetroNews This Morning: --Tree trimming crews have plenty of work to do in Bluefield--A team of VFD members from Mingo County are helping with critical work in western N.C. and East Tennessee--A number of fundraising efforts are underway in West Virginia to provide some help to flood and storm victims --In Sports:  Fred Persinger thumbnails the biggest games in high school football plus we preview WVU and Marshall matchups for the weekend 

Del. Joe Statler talks funding for VFD's. Dave continues to discuss addressing the homeless problems in Morgantown. 

AABP Executive Director Dr. Fred Gingrich is joined by Dr. John Angelos, University of California-Davis, and Dr. Dustin Loy, Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Center, to discuss infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis (IBK), commonly referred to as pinkeye. This is a multi-factorial disease that can sometimes be difficult to manage during outbreak situations. Our conversation begins as a review of the major pathogens associated with IBK which includes Moraxella bovis and Mycoplasma bovoculi  which are associated with the majority of cases submitted to diagnostic labs. Our guests also review the various risk factors associated with IBK including flies, mechanical trauma and viral infections. There are nine commercially available bacterin products, two conditionally licensed products, and autogenous vaccines to aid in the prevention of IBK in cattle. Our guests review some best practices for incorporating vaccination into herd health protocols as well as other prevention measures veterinarians may recommend to beef and dairy producers such as clipping pastures, fly control, mineral supplementation and managing viral risk factors.When prevention fails, treatment protocols are important for veterinarians to develop for producers during both individual animal cases and herd outbreaks. Oxytetracycline and tulathromycin are two antimicrobials currently labeled in the U.S. for treatment of IBK in cattle. There are no Veterinary Feed Directive products labeled for IBK treatment, prevention or control and veterinarians should be aware that it is prohibited to write a VFD for an extra-label use of in-feed antimicrobials. Veterinarians are an ideal resource to develop prevention and treatment protocols for managing IBK on beef and dairy operations. Continuing to monitor cases and risk factors can aid in managing this important disease.  

In this short podcast episode, Bryan dives into soft start & solar technology, which often work together. He also talks about how we can install ductless systems in homes that rely on solar power. Soft starts are NOT hard starts. Hard starts add more current to the start (auxiliary) winding, which creates a stronger phase shift. Instead, soft starts control the current on the start and run windings and provide just enough of a phase shift to ramp up the motor slowly; it provides a regulated power supply, which means that a slow startup doesn't necessarily cause overheating because there is no locked rotor condition. We can use soft starts on two-stage compressors but need to make sure the compressor goes up to high speed during the starting sequence. Soft starts "learn" the compressor's cycles, so we need to make sure they are trained to reach the high stage, not the low stage. In systems with multiple compressors, we need to have a separate soft start for each compressor. We don't need to use soft starts on inverter-driven or variable frequency drive (VFD) systems. Soft starts also make sense in systems that rely on solar technology. Solar technology may be on-grid (where we sell back energy during peak times) or off-grid (where energy is banked). Ductless systems can work with solar energy, but they must be connected to the grid or the bank. Banked solar energy doesn't need to be rectified in the same way that AC power from the electrical company does, which may be advantageous for ductless systems that rely on DC-driven technology.   Have a question that you want us to answer on the podcast? Submit your questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/hvacschool.  Purchase your tickets or learn more about the 6th Annual HVACR Training Symposium at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium. Subscribe to our podcast on your iPhone or Android.   Subscribe to our YouTube channel.  Check out our handy calculators here or on the HVAC School Mobile App for Apple and Android.

J'ai eu le plaisir de discuter avec Simon Leblond, co-fondateur et PDG @ SmartD Technologies.  Simon est un entrepreneur avec 20 ans d'expérience entrepreneuriale dans la mise sur le marché de technologies disruptives dans tous les secteurs. SmartD Technologies développe des variateurs de fréquence (VFD) pour le contrôle de moteurs. Leur variateur de fréquence Clean Power VFD peut augmenter l'efficacité des moteurs, réduire l'usure des équipements, économiser de l'énergie et réduire les coûts pour les entreprises de nombreux secteurs, notamment les infrastructures, les services publics, l'agriculture, les mines, les transports, entre autres. C'est un marché adressable énorme avec des gains en efficacité énergétique significatifs. En plus, Simon est un entrepreneur chevronné avec énormément d'expérience. Il a participé au lancement de trois entreprises, a introduit de nombreuses technologies sur le marché, et mentoré des entrepreneurs.  

Ever want to go back to the future? Wonder where variable frequency drive (VFD) motor control technology came from? Dave Dahl turns on the way back dial as he joins Jim and Sam where he'll give an overview of VFDs and their significance in various industries over time. In this episode we'll go back in time and explore the history, evolution and impact of VFDs. Email us if you have suggestions for upcoming podcasts, to give us feedback or get information on new episodes ⁠RAROKTalkDrives@ra.rockwell.com.⁠

Welcome to Episode #312 of the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast! In this riveting installment titled "VFDS: What The HeX Do These Parameters Do??," we delve deep into the perplexing world of Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) and their enigmatic parameters that often leave even seasoned professionals scratching their heads. Joining us in this episode is none other than the VFD Wizard himself, Matt Asbill from Motion Industries. With his unparalleled expertise and years of experience in the field, Matt demystifies the complex functionalities and settings of VFDs, shedding light on how they can be optimized for advanced refrigeration systems. Throughout this episode, we'll explore: The basics of VFD technology and its critical role in refrigeration applications. A deep dive into the most baffling VFD parameters, understanding what they do, and why they're essential. Practical insights from Matt Asbill on troubleshooting common VFD issues and optimizing performance for energy efficiency and longevity. Whether you're a seasoned engineer, a refrigeration technician, or just someone fascinated by the intricacies of refrigeration technology, this episode promises to enrich your understanding of VFDs and help you navigate their complexities with greater ease. Don't miss out on this enlightening discussion with special guest VFD Wizard Matt Asbill. Tune in to unravel the mysteries of VFD parameters and elevate your knowledge to the next level. Visit our website https://www.advancedrefrigerationpodcast.com/ for more episodes and resources to boost your expertise in advanced refrigeration systems. Remember to subscribe, share, and leave your feedback. Stay cool, and keep tuning in to the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast for more insights and expert discussions in the world of refrigeration.

We speak to Tony Furst from Armstrong Fluid Technology about proper VFD grounding and a phenomenon known as "Fluting". www.cintas.com/HVACKnowItAll Save 8% on your purchase https://www.trutechtools.com/ with promo code knowitall Check out the HVAC Know It All app app.hvacknowitall.com https://www.hvacknowitall.com/pages/about Visit HVAC Know It All on social media Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hvacknowitall/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hvacknowitall1/

Welcome to Episode #311 of the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast! In this riveting installment titled "VFDS: What The HeX Do These Parameters Do??," we delve deep into the perplexing world of Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) and their enigmatic parameters that often leave even seasoned professionals scratching their heads. Joining us in this episode is none other than the VFD Wizard himself, Matt Asbill from Motion Industries. With his unparalleled expertise and years of experience in the field, Matt demystifies the complex functionalities and settings of VFDs, shedding light on how they can be optimized for advanced refrigeration systems. Throughout this episode, we'll explore: The basics of VFD technology and its critical role in refrigeration applications. A deep dive into the most baffling VFD parameters, understanding what they do, and why they're essential. Practical insights from Matt Asbill on troubleshooting common VFD issues and optimizing performance for energy efficiency and longevity. Whether you're a seasoned engineer, a refrigeration technician, or just someone fascinated by the intricacies of refrigeration technology, this episode promises to enrich your understanding of VFDs and help you navigate their complexities with greater ease. Don't miss out on this enlightening discussion with special guest VFD Wizard Matt Asbill. Tune in to unravel the mysteries of VFD parameters and elevate your knowledge to the next level. Visit our website https://www.advancedrefrigerationpodcast.com/ for more episodes and resources to boost your expertise in advanced refrigeration systems. Remember to subscribe, share, and leave your feedback. Stay cool, and keep tuning in to the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast for more insights and expert discussions in the world of refrigeration.

VFD & Breaker Sizing | Advanced Refrigeration Podcast Episode 308 Welcome to another cutting-edge episode of the Advanced Refrigeration Podcast, the go-to platform for HVACR professional development and insights. In this episode, we delve deep into the critical topics of Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) and breaker sizing, crucial components for optimizing efficiency and reliability in refrigeration systems. Join our experts, Brett Wetzel and Kevin Compass, as they unpack the intricacies of VFDs, exploring how these devices can significantly reduce energy consumption and extend the life of your refrigeration system's motors. We'll also guide you through the nuances of breaker sizing, ensuring your systems are safe, compliant, and running at peak performance.Whether you're a budding technician or a seasoned professional, this episode is packed with valuable knowledge, from practical tips to the latest industry trends in CO2 systems, case diagnostics, and EMS programming. Stay ahead of the curve in commercial refrigeration and HVAC technologies with our in-depth discussions, tutorials, and live Q&As.Don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more HVACR training and insights, and join our community of professionals committed to excellence in the field. Your journey to mastering refrigeration technology continues here! Links: Advanced Refrigeration Podcast: https://www.advancedrefrigerationpodcast.com/Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: Advanced Refrigeration Podcast #HVACR #Refrigeration #VFD #BreakerSizing #AdvancedRefrigerationPodcast #ProfessionalDevelopment #co2 #refrigeration #refrigerationsystems #refrigerationtech #hvac #hvacservice #hvaclife

Canada and VFD Tuning Kevin, can I talk about my trip.... and talking about the ins and outs of VFD tuning.

This week on A Novel Console, Chris and Karradyne bring back the popular Sex Toy of the Week series with a horrific visit to realdoll.com! Afterwards, five new books and games get brought out of the Backlog to be sacrificed to the gods in the Backlog of Doom! Karradyne nominates fantasy Christmas, and a murder mystery, while Chris only nominates RPGs he's been dying to play!You can contact us at:anovelconsole@gmail.comFacebook.com/anovelconsoleTwitter.com/anovelconsoleInstagram: @anovelconsolePatreon.com/anovelconsoleOther Streaming Platforms:anovelconsole.carrd.coSupport the show

TCW Podcast Episode 198 - The History of Handheld Games Part 1   Recorded in front of a live-streaming audience, we delve into the captivating history of handheld games, commencing with an unexpected origin—the pocket-sized calculator. The innovative strides made in pocket calculator technology paved the way for toy companies to venture into the realm of handheld electronic games, resulting in classics such as Mattel Football and Auto Race. As advancements and reduced production costs followed, favorites like Simon and Merlin emerged. However, the early games faced a common challenge—the limitations of display capabilities at an affordable price point. To overcome this hurdle, inventive technologies like nixie tubes, VFD displays, and LEDs were harnessed to deliver engaging gameplay experiences. Notably, the VFD display mini arcades left a lasting mark, offering some of the most captivating recreations of popular arcade titles. This is part 1 of a 3-part series, exploring the evolution of handheld gaming and revealing the creative solutions and technological milestones that have defined this interactive landscape.   How it's Made Vacuum Tubes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n4WVRKkmww Integrated Circuits Crash Course Computer Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-tKOHICqrI How Pocket Calculators Changed Electronics Forever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goB47Cgqxfs Nixie Tube Clock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yS5w98xmwI Nixie Tube Calculator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k49_PG5CUAk Eversharp Mechanical Pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPoL2Ny4NmA TCW 025 - Mattel Electronics?: http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/mattel-electronics/ TCW 177 - The Intellivision Part 1: http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-intellivision-part-1/ TCW 178 - The Intellivision Part 2: http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-intellivision-part-2/ Mattel Football: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ5TVoVD5Ss Mattel Auto Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l72CDVzrtiQ Touch Me Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV8y2oDzIeg Simon Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MOBW8f0CU0 Merlin Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZWlIm0jy30 Inside Tokyo's tiniest luxury apartment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ7Bu_SDJgM VFD Displays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkPSDOjhxwM In a Minute VFD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tAss5GJRKrg Slot Cars Racetrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TlExU8j984 Slot Cars Racing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNg2g3oODH8 TonyTronic PacMan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX86fRdilGc Epoch Invader From Space Handheld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed4atls32wU Entex Galaxian 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov9YiOw-lvA Entex Pac Man 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqnQzU0erno TCW 124 - The Visions of Coleco Part 1: http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-visions-of-coleco-part-1/ TCW 125 - The Visions of Coleco Part 2: http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-visions-of-coleco-part-2/ Coleco Mini Arcade Frogger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzOtMB-lU9c 8-Bit Guy - Mini Tabletop Arcade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuo0njOI-qE Entex Adventure Vision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYnCwNKaVAM Adventure Vision all 4 Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUwS1PipKXQ Browser Gameplay of Adventure Vision: https://archive.org/details/adventurevision_library   New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month!   TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com  Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1   Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode -  Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode  Outro Music: RolemMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love    Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this episode of the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast, host Trevor Matthews is joined by two experts from RDM, Chris Prom and Cody Hamm, to dive deep into the world of CO2 refrigeration. They discuss the PR0650-STCO2 platform, setting up fuzzy logic suction groups, oil injection control, and much more. Episode Highlights: Introduction to RDM and the PR0650-STCO2 Platform Chris and Cody introduce RDM and the PR0650-STCO2 platform, highlighting its significance in the refrigeration industry. Setting up Fuzzy Logic Suction Groups The experts explain the concept of fuzzy logic and how it's applied to optimize suction group settings for CO2 refrigeration systems. Oil Injection Control Detailed insights into controlling oil injection in CO2 systems, ensuring efficient operation and system longevity. Setting Up CO2 Case Controllers A step-by-step guide on how to configure CO2 case controllers, focusing on best practices and common challenges. Navigating CO2 Controllers Exploring the user interface and key functionalities of CO2 controllers, making it easier for technicians to operate and troubleshoot. Reviewing Graphic Interfaces A discussion on the visual representations and interfaces used in RDM CO2 controllers, simplifying the complex for users. Troubleshooting and Replacement Processes Insightful tips and tricks for identifying and rectifying issues in CO2 systems, as well as how to smoothly replace components when needed. Setting Up, Controlling, and Troubleshooting HPV and FGBV with RDM Controllers A comprehensive guide on managing High-Pressure Valves (HPV) and Four-Way Bypass Valves (FGBV) using RDM controllers, with troubleshooting techniques. This episode of the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast offers a deep dive into CO2 refrigeration with RDM's Chris Prom and Cody Hamm. Listeners gain valuable insights into the PR0650-STCO2 platform, setting up fuzzy logic suction groups, oil injection control, CO2 case controllers, navigating CO2 controllers, graphic interfaces, troubleshooting, and the management of HPV and FGBV with RDM controllers. Whether you're a seasoned technician or just starting out in the industry, this episode provides a wealth of knowledge to enhance your CO2 refrigeration skills. Learn More about RDM - HERE Disclaimer: The information provided in this episode is based on the knowledge and expertise of the guests as of the recording date. Listeners are encouraged to consult the latest documentation and guidelines for the most up-to-date information in the field of CO2 refrigeration. Free Refrigeration Piping Design Course - Access Here Let's Connect on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/refrigerationmentor/ Upcoming Servicing Compressors, Supermarket and CO2 Trainings - Learn More Here Learn More About Refrigeration Mentor - https://refrigerationmentor.com/ Get A Free Service & Compressor Troubleshooting Guide - Access Here

** Named Best Podcast 2 Consecutive Years! 2022 & 2023 Apex Awards of Publication Excellence. A VFD cable is a three-phase cable with integrated grounds and a shield. But why can't you just use individual conductors like THHN or THWN and place them in conduit instead of using a VFD cable? Executive Editor Theresa Houck chats with Steve Wetzel, Senior Product Engineer at Southwire Co., about what kind of wire people use in wire-in-pipe installations, the drawbacks to using wire in pipe, the serious issues this causes, and why VFD cable is a better option. And as always, get your family-friendly, silly Joke of the Day. Resources: Visit Southwire Co. at Booth #526 at the 2023 Automation Fair Event. Learn about Factory Power & Automation | Southwire. If you like “Automation Chat,” please leave us a 5-star rating and a review. Video of this podcast conversation is available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/1fCcSqeBeoE.

Tonight, we have Caddo-Midway Fire and Rescue District's Hannah Stephens along with Meteorologist James Spann to share about the importance of VFD's in our communities and an upcoming fundraiser on October 7th to support the VFD. I hope you will listen and share.

I want to gain muscle and lose weight. Is this a realistic goal? How does this look, if it is? It is possible to do this, over time, sustainably, by building healthy habits. Check out the first part of this 2-part series. Andrew & Niki explore the journeys of different "typical" Barbell Logic clients and what these processes look like. Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Gain Muscle and Lose Weight - Older, Fluffy Man This type of client tends to be a busy, middle-aged professional and dad who's put a bit more fat around the belly than he'd like. One might call him fluffy. Certain habits that didn't lead to a large waist when they were younger have caught up with them. Some likely culprits include alcohol, large (especially weekend meals) highly processed meals, or fatty grilled meats. Often times, these clients can white knuckle fairly strictly for awhile, and can often eat healthy on weekdays, but weekends and maybe summer tend to present challenges. They may have made progress in the gym or in some physical activity, but whatever progress they have made no longer matters compared to their waist and appearance (plus how they feel). They may tend to be on or off, so they have big swings of calories. When helping these clients, addressing those big swings is important. It does not mean that they cannot eat these foods, but there needs to be some portion control so some pizza does not turn into a whole pizza. A drink doesn't turn into 3 every night. The other big consideration is sleep. Building good sleep habits helps here, both with decision making, hormones, and overall health. Additionally, if alcohol is a problem, bringing attention to how alcohol affects sleep can help. Gain Muscle and Lose Weight - Busy Mom The busy mom shares some similarities with the previous client, but some important differences exist too. These clients tend to have younger children, and with parental duties and work duties, duties to themselves often come last. When any area falls short, they tend to beat themselves up. The good development for clients like this, is that more women are accepting that adding muscles leads to looking better. They are often not simply looking to "be skinny." Similar to the men, they need to avoid the unstable nutrition (the "I deserve this" meal that leads to guilt). Giving these clients validation with simply getting certain things done is critical. Completing a workout, even if it does not go well (it's a "bad" workout) matters. Filling out the VFD, meal prep - the validation of building those habits is huge. Talking about 3 months as opposed to a year or a couple weeks is big. Also, need to shake the "1200 calories" anchor point. You Can Gain Muscle and Lose Weight When it comes to gaining muscle and losing weight, it takes time, it takes healthy habits, and it takes realistic expectations. If you look at the above and the previous clients, the discussion centers around nutrition. Training matters, but training does not have to change very much. One consideration may be the focus of PRs. You as the coach may consider drawing attention to different types of PRs (higher rep, different variations, or bodyweight exercises). Or, you may consider discussing PRs at lower bodyweight. Lastly, conditioning, while we love conditioning, is not the way to gain muscle and lose weight. Do conditioning for your health. Don't try to burn your way into a calorie deficit. That being said, conditioning is a healthy habit that we fully endorse. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts Matt on Instagram Niki on Instagram Andrew on Instagram Connect with the show Barbell Logic on Instagram Podcast Webpage Barbell Logic on Facebook Or email podcast@barbell-logic.com

In this episode of the Pumps & Systems podcast, learn why bearings can fail and how to mitigate electric current arcing with Schaeffler Sr. Application Engineer Paul McNeill. Schaeffler Group is the presenting sponsor of the podcast. Visit them on the web at www.schaeffler.com. Questions asked include: What are ways that bearings could deteriorate in a pump system? How does a VFD system work, especially as it relates to anything creating parasitic voltages across the bearings? How do bearings resist this voltage? What are some examples of current passing through the bearing as well as the resulting damage? What are some common approaches to minimizing risks for bearing damage? Email podcast host Drew Champlin at dchamplin@cahabamedia.com.

In this short podcast episode, Bryan talks about motor speed and other basic electrical topics as they relate to motors in HVAC equipment. In a typical single-phase PSC-type (induction-driven) motor, the speed is primarily determined by the electrical cycle rate, also known as the hertz. The hertz represents the speed at which the electrical current changes direction (positive to negative) per second; in the USA, that number is typically 60 hertz. Unless we're dealing with ECMs and VFD-driven motors, the motor speed will be partially influenced by the hertz or frequency as determined by the utility company or a generator. Motor speed is also determined by the number of magnetic poles in the motor. A motor doesn't make a complete revolution per cycle; a cycle only refers to the distance between two poles. The more poles we have, the shorter the distance needs to turn per cycle. A two-pole motor rotates all the way every cycle, resulting in 3600 RPM under no-slip conditions (synchronous speed). A four-pole motor has half the RPM, and an eight-pole motor has 1/4 of the RPM of a two-pole motor. Speed taps add winding resistance between run and common to create slip and slow the motor. A six-pole motor has 1200 RPM synchronous, but 1075 is the effective speed with slip factored in. Each speed has a different level of winding resistance, which slows the motor as you move from high to low; the lower-speed tap has higher resistance than high-speed taps. ECMs and VFD-driven systems convert the frequency and don't depend on the electrical frequency from the utility or generator.   Learn more about the HVACR Training Symposium or buy a virtual ticket today at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium. If you have an iPhone, subscribe to the podcast HERE, and if you have an Android phone, subscribe HERE. Check out our handy calculators HERE.

In this brief episode, Executive Editor Theresa Houck tells you what topics we're covering in the next issue of The Journal From Rockwell Automation and Our PartnerNetwork magazine — our June digital magazine that deploys June 29. Learn about upcoming stories on cloud-based MES in food manufacturing, how VFD cable affects motor performance, tips for secure remote access systems and more. And of course, get your family-friendly, silly Joke of the Day. If you like “Automation Chat,” please leave us a 5-star rating, and Follow/Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Access resources from today's episode: The Journal From Rockwell Automation and Our PartnerNetwork Magazine Online To subscribe to our 4 print magazines (Jan., Apr., July and Oct.), e-mail Carmela Kappel at ckappel@endeavorb2b.com. Subscribe to our 8 digital magazines at http://rok.auto/thejournal-subscribe. ** Award of Excellence Winner for Best Podcast, 2022 APEX Awards of Publication Excellence. Learn more

Join us for an informative episode as we welcome Mark Brady, Regional Sales Manager for Nortek Air Solutions, back to the studio. Mark's vast industry knowledge and expertise in array controls are excellent as he breaks down the basics to the advanced. This short yet powerful episode will provide you with a clear understanding of standard fan array electric panels and control options. You can watch the full video version of this episode on our YouTube Channel, Insight Partners HVAC TV, by clicking on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/InsightPartnersHVACTV⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Insight Partners Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.insightusa.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with me on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-mormino⁠⁠⁠⁠ View current line card: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.insightusa.com/manufacturers⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect to Insight Partners on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/insightusa⁠⁠⁠⁠ Tony Mormino at Insight Partners: tmormino@insightusa.com Throughout the episode, we touch on fan array motor overload protection, fan array VFD panels, VFD panels with bypass, Fanwall with redundant VFD panels, and multi-drive VFD panels for fan arrays. Fanwall technology has become increasingly popular among building owners in various commercial and industrial applications such as hospitals, data centers, laboratories, schools and universities, and office buildings. The FANWALL array of fans enables designers to optimize fan wheel geometry and motor horsepower for specific applications, resulting in smaller fans and motors running closer to peak efficiencies, thus reducing energy costs.

AABP Executive Director Dr. Fred Gingrich is joined by Dr. Eric Moore, an AABP member who is Director of Technical Services at Norbrook. Guidance for Industry (GFI) #263 is part of the FDA's five-year plan which will move the remaining medically important antimicrobials under veterinary oversight. This means that all medically important antimicrobials that are currently marketed as over-the-counter (OTC) medications will be moved to prescription (Rx) status. About 95% of antimicrobials sold in the U.S. are administered by feed or water. The remaining 5% of dosage forms include both OTC and Rx products and this move will ensure that all medically important antimicrobials are under the oversight of the veterinarian who has a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship with the producer. Moore discusses the products that will be affected that cattle veterinarians and producers use, as well as discuss what will happen as these products have a change in marketing status. This implementation will be different than the implementation of the Veterinary Feed Directive where on that date, no products could be used that did not have an associated authorization VFD from the veterinarian. OTC products will have their labels changed to Rx; however, those products currently in commerce after June 11, 2023, will be able to be exhausted and newly labeled products will require a prescription from the veterinarian. Moore suggests that veterinarians familiarize themselves with the regulation and make sure to communicate these changes to producers in their communities. Producers should make sure they have a valid VCPR prior to the need for the medications and that veterinarians continue to implement antimicrobial stewardship plans on their clients' operations. This includes the question “why are you using this antimicrobial?” as the first step in stewardship is preventing disease.  Relevant links:FDA Frequently Asked Questions on GFI #263 GFI #263 Recommendations for Sponsors of Medically Important Antimicrobials FDA GFI #263 Text AABP Guidelines for Establishing and Maintaining the VCPR in Bovine Practice AABP Key Elements for Implementing Antimicrobial Stewardship Plans in Bovine Veterinary Practices Working with Beef and Dairy Operations AVMA Resources on GFI #263 

AABP Executive Director Dr. Fred Gingrich is joined by past AABP Board of Directors member from District 3, Dr. Lee Jones. Jones is an associate professor at the University of Georgia in the Beef Production Medicine department. Jones was the first author on the paper titled “Seroprevalence and molecular detection of Anaplasma marginale-infected beef herds in Georgia, USA”, which was published in The Bovine Practitioner Volume 56 Number 2 (2022). We review the transmission, clinical signs, and diagnostic tests for bovine anaplasmosis. The objective of the study was to conduct and compare seroprevalence and molecular detection of Anaplasma marginale-infected beef herds in Georgia and to identify herd risk factors associated with A. marginale-positive herds. Blood samples were collected from 1,059 adult beef cattle (≥ 2 years) from 33 herds. Overall, 8.12% of cattle and 42% of herds were cELISA antibody-positive. Seventy-seven percent of plasma samples from a subset of corresponding seropositive samples (n = 73) were PCR-positive. Jones reviews the risk factors associated with bovine anaplasmosis and how veterinarians can become involved in prevention and control programs for their clients. Education is important because 27% of the survey respondents were not aware of the disease even with a high percentage of herds positive. We also discuss the importance of ensuring appropriate delivery of VFD medication for control of anaplasmosis as part of a control program. Relevant publication:Jones, A. L., Berghaus, R. D., Kalatari, A. A., Credille, B., Naikare, H. K., Heins, B., Saliki, J., & Wilkes, R. P. (2022). Seroprevalence and molecular detection of Anaplasma marginale infected beef herds in Georgia, USA. The Bovine Practitioner, 56(2), 70–78. https://doi.org/10.21423/bovine-vol56no2p70-78  

Kevin And I Talk about Things to Look out For when your dealing with VFD operated Compressor's

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and (former Assignments Editor) Kristina Panos stood around talking about the greatest hacks of the previous week. But first, we've got a contest running now through March 21st -- the Low Power Challenge! Kristina almost got What's That Sound this week, but could only describe it as some sort of underwater organ, so still no t-shirt for her. But [BalkanBoy] knew exactly what it was -- the Zadar Sea Organ in Croatia. Then it's on to the hacks, beginning with the most beautiful sea of 7-segments you'll likely ever see. We gush over a tiny PC in a floppy drive that uses custom cartridges, dish about an expressive synth that uses a flexure mechanism, and enjoy a loving ode to the vacuum fluorescent display.

We speak to Anish Suthesh Arul from Armstrong Fluid Technology about VFD or variable speed drive basics. Jobber 40% off offer from Dec 19 to 22 and 26 to 30 https://getjobber.com/hvacknowitall. Jobber Summit link http://bitly.com/ http://www.cintas.com/HVACKnowItAll. Save 8% on your purchase https://www.trutechtools.com/ with promo code knowitall Check out the HVAC Know It All app app.hvacknowitall.com https://www.hvacknowitall.com/pages/about Visit HVAC Know It All on social media Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hvacknowitall/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hvacknowitall1/

In this short podcast in our electrical myths series, Bryan talks about some inductive current myths. There is a common myth surrounding voltage drop in inductive loads. When you decrease the voltage in a circuit with a resistive load, you'll see a relatively proportional drop in resistance (ohms) and current in accordance with Ohm's law. So, we'll see a decrease in current, but we have to keep in mind that load temperatures also affect the resistance (and the current, by extension). Some people will claim that reducing the voltage in an inductive load (like a motor or compressor) will increase the current. That is actually generally a myth; many people believe this myth because the current drop is NOT proportional, unlike in resistive loads. The resistance that shows up in a motor is called inductive reactance, which is an opposing magnetic field that creates back electromotive force (back EMF) and impedes the circuit. Back EMF and inductive reactance contribute to the impedance or total resistance of the circuit. Decreasing the voltage may cause the resistance to increase, as some of the work will start contributing to heat instead of mechanical motion; the motor derates, becomes less efficient, and draws more current than it needs, but it doesn't actually draw more total current. However, some variable-speed motors on VFDs may draw more current because the motor module speeds up the motor to make up for the voltage deficiency, static pressure, etc. ECMs also fall into this category and may draw more current if the motor module or VFD calls for it. However, in terms of simple electrical math without VFD logic, the current won't typically increase if the voltage drops, even in inductive loads.   If you have an iPhone, subscribe to the podcast HERE, and if you have an Android phone, subscribe HERE. Check out our handy calculators HERE.

Dr. Tracy Farone, joins us in this episode. Tracy is a veterinarian, a professor of biology at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, a board member of the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium, a beekeeper and a regular contributor to Bee Culture magazine. Veterinarians, you will hear her say, were brought into the beekeeping world because of the diseases bees face and the potential for antimicrobial resistance. It's been a change the industry has had to face. It was not all that long ago, products such as Terramycin™ (oxcytetracycline) was found on farm store shelves and beekeepers were directed to use it in the treatment of American Foulbrood. It was also occasionally suggested to use it as a dusting on the top bars of brood frames to prophylactically prevent AFB. With the rise of antibiotic resistant varieties of diseases, the unprescribed use these medications has been stopped and now available for use on animals and livestock only under the prescription of a veterinarian. “I understand why beekeepers want to do what they've always been doing, but they're facing more and more bee health problems. It would be good to get veterinarians on board.” she said. “We can contribute here. We can provide so much more than a prescription or VFD to the industry. If we can blend veterinary medical expertise within the beekeeping industry, it's not just an arranged marriage, but a marriage where we can help each other.” This is a fascinating discussion and one you will not want to miss. We hope you enjoy the episode. Leave comments and questions in the Comments Section of the episode's website. Thank you for listening! Links and websites mentioned in this podcast:  Honey Bee Veternarian Consortium - https://www.hbvc.org Grove City College Bees - https://www.gccbeeproject.com/ HBVC Talk with Beekeeping Today Podcast - https://www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com/the-honey-bee-veterinary-consortium-with-allie-and-britteny-s3-e15/  Bee Culture October Event: Inspiring Leaders in Beekeeping - https://www.beeculture.com/beeing-diverse-inspiring-leaders-in-beekeeping/ Honey Bee Obscura - https://www.honeybeeobscura.com ______________ This episode is brought to you by Global Patties! Global offers a variety of standard and custom patties. Visit them today at http://globalpatties.com and let them know you appreciate them sponsoring this episode!  We welcome Betterbee as sponsor of today's episode. Betterbee's mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com Thanks to Strong Microbials for their support of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Find out more about heir line of probiotics in our Season 3, Episode 12 episode and from their website: https://www.strongmicrobials.com We want to also thank 2 Million Blossoms as a sponsor of the podcast. 2 Million Blossoms is a regular podcast featuring interviews with leading bee and insect researchers in the world of pollination, hosted by Dr. Kirsten Traynor. _______________ We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments in the show notes of this episode or: questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of The Beekeeping Today Podcast. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com Thank you for listening!  Podcast music: Be Strong by Young Presidents; Epilogue by Musicalman; Walking in Paris by Studio Le Bus; A Fresh New Start by Pete Morse; Original guitar background instrumental by Jeff Ott Beekeeping Today Podcast is an audio production of Growing Planet Media, LLC

Bryan lays down some motor speed facts in about 10 minutes in this short podcast episode. We can figure out how quickly a single-phase motor (PSC) will run if we understand how many cycles it will make per second. In the USA, the standard hertz is 60 Hz (60 rotations or magnetic alternations per second). Motors are inductive loads that create an electromagnetic field with a spinning rotor and stationary stator; the amount of poles on the stator determines how quickly the rotor spins (RPM). In the RPM counts, there are some allowances for slip. Slip varies depending on the load, with excessive loads causing more slip. Some multi-tap blowers have additional winding resistance and decreased current (due to the extra taps), which increase the slip. The rated load RPM usually accounts for the RPM at high speed, not medium or low speed with added resistance. On the other hand, variable-speed motors or ECMs are powered by a variable frequency (sometimes a variable frequency drive or VFD). The motor control takes the incoming electrical frequency and converts it into a new frequency (turning AC power to DC and controlling the cycle rate). These motors also tend to be more efficient as a result. The RPM is more variable on these motors with VFDs, whereas we could only manipulate the RPM of single-phase motors by changing the number of poles. When replacing a motor, you can't use a replacement motor with a higher rated RPM than the original motor. The only way to change the RPM is to get a new motor with a different number of poles, increase slip to make it slower or decrease slip to bring it closer to synchronous speed, or adjust the frequency.     If you have an iPhone, subscribe to the podcast HERE, and if you have an Android phone, subscribe HERE. Check out our handy calculators HERE.

Chris Micallef, the CEO of Falkonair, joins Nathan Orr at AHR to discuss energy savings for three-phase equipment. They also explore some of Falkonair's controls for compressors, especially on DC inverter equipment. Falkonair has software that allows users to control all types and brands of three-phase compressors with compatible variable frequency drives (VFDs). The software recommends the compatible VFD based on the amperage readings. Falkonair aims to bring this software to the refrigeration industry and then move on to HVAC contractors and data centers. The control unit adjusts the compressor speed to respond to changes in refrigerant charge levels (based on discharge temperature). These controls protect the compressor and maintain efficiency, even under less than ideal operating conditions. Energy efficiency can increase by 35% with Falkonair's control units in place. You can expect longer runtimes, a reduction in short cycles, and a reduction in humidity. If the refrigerant loss is too great, then the control can also shut down the compressor. However, it should take less time for a facility manager to notice that refrigerant loss is happening. The controls use temperature probes, so they don't cut into the refrigeration circuit. Although VFDs are good for reducing vibrational wear and tear, we have to be aware of potential issues with harmonics. Harmonics can damage the bearings, especially on pumps that don't have oil constantly lubricating the bearings. Chris and Nathan also discuss: VFD sizing considerations How Falkonair's AI works with hot gas bypass  Software commissioning Oil return sequences on DC inverter systems Hertz ranges and limitations per compressor type How Falkonair's control units can exceed 35% efficiency gains   Learn more about Falkonair at https://falkonair.com/.  If you have an iPhone, subscribe to the podcast HERE, and if you have an Android phone, subscribe HERE. Check out our handy calculators HERE.