Peabody

     This machine is at my current employer and had an HMI that was removed at some point before my time. This meant that when the operator needed a particular option changed, it required an electrician to change a value in the plc memory via a pc with the program loaded.
     I had talked about installing an HMI to change this option. Not too much time passed and I was told to do it.
     I was then on a mission to see what it would take to do this job. The processor is a GE Fanuc Series One. I found that the DirectSoft koyo software was compatable with this. I go connected to it and was not too surprised with the ~100 blank lines of code in the program.
     I studied the program after cleaning it up ad adding comments from the 1989 prints that I had found. I got a C-More HMI, that was removed from another machine, got it talking to the GE and setup the screen to change what the operator needed. I also found some error messages that were for the old HMI. I had to modify the plc program to set error numbers for the new HMI to show the same messages.
     Now that all of that works, I had to move the HMI from the 'test' area to the operator's console where the old one used to be. Now, all is working just fine and I was able to keep the non-plc guys out of the program. This also frees up the electricians from making these changes every few hours.