Mitsubishi Electric Automation (Vernon Hills, IL) has announced the new iQ-R Series System Recorder Module that assists programmers in determining a machine's malfunction root cause by recording all program and mechanical state changes before and after an event or error takes place.
The most difficult errors to troubleshoot are those that are non-repeatable and/or occur at seemingly random times. Traditionally, these issues were resolved by creating program "traps" that capture key process information at the time of the error, hoping to gain enough information to track down the root cause.
This new system recorder eliminates the ambiguity in diagnosing issues by recording all changes in programming code for several minutes before and after an event takes place.
Users can review the changes that took place in their code leading up to and after the event.
In addition, the system recorder allows users to record the data visually, in video format, directly to the module to note environmental conditions that the code cannot see.
“Every so often we used to run into certain errors we called ghost issues. Maybe 1 in 30 customers would experience an issue, but narrowing down the root cause was difficult. It wasn’t uncommon for us to travel to the customer site and dedicate multiple days to hunting down exactly what took place to cause the issue," said Rob Ruber, senior product manager at Mitsubishi Electric Automation. "If I had access to a solution like this, it would have been a game changer."
