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Industry: General 
Project: Providing Connectivity Capability to Serial Printer  

Overview: Our client, a manufacturer in North Carolina, is required to print certain information on their product at different intervals based on the type of product being produced.  The information to be printed and to be used to determine the print interval is transmitted from their production system as a comma separated variable ASCII string.
System Objectives

  • Provide connectivity between shop floor PC and PLC

  • Separate Print data from set-up data 

  • Change Print length based on type of cable

  • Transmit printer set-up and Print data to serial printer

 Design Challenges

  • Receive data via one port and Transmit to printer via another port

  • Connect RS-232C serial ports via fiber optic modems

  • Understand printer protocol and write a Protocol Macro for serial printer

  • Develop program code in ladder to separate CSV string
System Solutions

  • Utilize the communication power of the CS1 CPU to handle four serial ports simultaneously

  • Installed a CS1W-SCB41 with Protocol Macro functionality to transmit data to printer

  • Use Protocol Macro Development software to develop protocol strings for serial printer

  • Utilized CS1’s built-in string instructions to locate commas and store separated data as variables

 Customer Benefits

  • Eliminated extra programming required in SCADA system

  • Eliminated operator errors when entering print string & length

  • Improved handling of cable orders

  • Allows lines to handle a broad variety of product types

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