Implementation of control for peripheral machine equipment based on the external soft PLC integrated with CNC

This article discusses the general structure of the CNC control system with the Soft PLC module which was implemented as an external unit. The advantages of reducing the EtherCAT cycle, increasing control system reliability and disadvantages associated with the additional cost of the proposed solution were investigated. The proposed solution also uses the external Soft PLC instead of the safety controller and reduces hardware requirements to CNC. This ultimately leads to an overall reduction in the cost of the distributed control system. Hardware solutions analysis was conducted to select a single-board microcomputer for Soft PLC. A solution was offered for communication between the CNC and the external Soft PLC.