Raise a Glass

Recently, many engineers on our Denver team have been working long hours onsite. Since this has made some team members even more isolated, we wanted to host an activity fund event to get the team together virtually. 

Since the Denver office even named our conference rooms after breweries, a beer tasting was a perfect fit. Our virtual beer tasting included team members stationed onsite at three different projects and several calling in from home via Zoom. The group was mostly made up of the DMC Denver team, but we had some friends from the Houston and Chicago offices join in as well. 

Taste Test

Every attendee had three beers to taste. There were some differences, given that people were calling in from different locations, but here is what the majority of us tasted: 

• Brasserie de Rochefort – Rochefort 6
• Brasserie de Rochefort – Rochefort 8
• Monk’s Café – Flemish Sour Ale
• Ommegang – Double Barrel Dubbel
• Ommegang -Dubbel Merlau
• Brouwerij Huyghe – Delirium Nocturnum

Most of the beers we tasted were ones that people had never tried before, which offered a great variety of new options! The crowd favorites were the Rochefort 8, Dubbel Merlau, and Delirium Nocturnum.

All Together Now

Before and after the beer tasting session, we played Among Us. It’s a multiplayer game with one imposter sabotaging a mission, so we learned who we could really trust!

Our first virtual beer tasting was a success, with many people finding some new favorite brews and all of us getting to spend some time together. It was a great opportunity to catch up with one another and relax outside of work hours. It went so well, that DMC has more virtual beer tastings planned. Stay tuned for our upcoming beer recommendations and cheers!

Learn more about DMC’s company culture. 

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You can also meet us at the Siemens Booth 13024 for a demonstration of this custom Brewing Template that is already live in one of the most prominent craft breweries in Michigan.

When you need an easy way to scale up your beer production without hiring more people or reducing quality, this Siemens automation solution enables you to increase production, reduce costs, and bring your product to market faster.

Brewing Template Overview Screen

Presentation Details

Easy and Scalable Solutions for Brewery Automation with Siemens
Wednesday, April 10^th
11:30 am – 1:00 pm
Room 404

Convention Center Map

Learn more about all the sponsored presentations going on at the conference.

Conference Details

“The Craft Brewers Conference is the number one environment in North America for concentrated, affordable brewing education and idea sharing to improve brewery quality and performance. Attendees can choose from twelve education tracks led by the top minds in the beer and business worlds.”

Location and Directions

Colorado Convention Center
700 14^th St.
Denver, Colorado 80202

Transportation Directions

Are you planning on attending the conference? Let us know in the comments or contact DMC Denver to let us know you’ll be stopping by.

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The 2019 Siemens Automation Summit was held from June 17 – 20 at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Aurora, CO, near DMC’s Denver office. 

The Automation Summit featured over 50 user-led presentations and trainings sharing industry innovations and best practices. DMC is proud to deliver the following presentations at this year’s event.

If you’re attending the Automation Summit, stop by these sessions led by DMC!

Flexibility and Standardization Using Dynamic IO Addressing and Option Handling – David Berno
Date: Wednesday, June 19
Time: 1:00 PM
Room: Red Rock 7

Advanced manufacturing of the 21st century requires the ability to commission automated lines efficiently and to adapt to manufacturing changes with agility. The S7-1500 platform is ideally suited to meet these needs. 

This presentation will dive into solutions that DMC developed that fully leverage S7’s hardware and development flexibility to create efficient and agile manufacturing deployments. Our customer required a solution that allowed end users to create standard wiring schemes that could be updated in the field without programmers.

We will demonstrate how we achieved this using TIA Portal Extended Addressing instructions to dynamically update IO addresses used in program modules. Additionally, utilizing Option Handling we were able to create a standard program with a variety of hardware options that could be deployed quickly. Learn to leverage TIA Portal flexibility to create a better-standardized solution for your application.  

Auto Code Generation and Rapid Brewery/Distillery Automation – Ryan Landwehr
Date: Tuesday, June 18
Time: 10:00 AM
Room: Red Rock 7

The Siemens Brewing Template is a TIA Portal based auto code generation tool developed in conjunction with Siemens. This presentation will highlight the use of Openness, Simatic Visualization Architect (SiVArc), and S7 Graph to auto-generate and link control modules on a PLC and HMI. We will also elaborate on how to use these tools outside of the brewing world for any application.

Additionally, we will illustrate the full development cycle of a project, starting with a Microsoft Excel document and a global library, and finishing with a fully functional project. With over a year in operation, DMC will also discuss Brewing Template success stories such as the complete automation of a craft distillery in Dallas, TX. 

Multi-site WinCC 7 Development with Centralized Process Historian & Information Server – John Michael Frullo
Date: Wednesday, June 19
Time: 9:00 AM
Room: Red Rock 7

Developing a single SCADA application can be a time-consuming process. Expanding this effort across multiple plants nationwide with the desire for centralized data and reporting service can make this task even more daunting.

Luckily, with WinCC 7, we can take advantage of key features that facilitate the rapid development and standardization of projects across multiple locations. Additionally, the Process Historian and Information Server can be utilized for long-term data storage and automated reporting across all sites from a central location.

Come learn about the tools DMC used to modernize a client’s legacy SCADA into a multi-site WinCC 7 installation that collects information from a variety of PLCs, ranging from legacy TI-505’s and S7-300’s to modern S7-1200’s and S7-1500’s. This data is seamlessly passed through redundant servers and on to the central data storage and reporting center. See how these tools could help you with your next SCADA project! 

Dynamic and Scalable Systems Using WinCC OA – Leon Grossman
Date: Tuesday, June 18
Time: 3:00 PM
Room: Red Rock 9

Siemens WinCC OA provides an extremely flexible and scalable platform that is broadly applicable across industries, especially when scalability is a factor. We’ve used it for manufacturing, pharmaceutical, automotive, and, in this case, defense. RT&T operates the National RADAR Test Facility for the US Air Force.

The high-risk nature of this application requires both high availability and ease of diagnostics in case of system faults. These requirements utilized the system’s native redundancy and the strong customization capabilities of WinCC OA’s scripting language.

This solution utilizes reusable objects built on the new CTRL++ (object-oriented) development concepts released in the latest versions of WinCC OA along with tight integration to PLC data structures to create self-configuring objects to adapt as the system grows and changes. This allowed us to create a system that was easy to use but still contained rich information for the user. The new CTRL++ design allowed for modifying the visualization of objects while maintaining the same core scripting behind objects.

The mission-critical nature of the system required the use of WinCC OA’s redundancy feature to ensure that all test articles are secured properly even in the case of network or server issues. This redundancy even includes both servers operating independently in case of a catastrophic break in the network backbone. Finally, we were able to leverage the open connectivity of WinCC OA’s driver stack to integrate a holistic system with several different data sources and targets.

Finally, we were able to leverage the open connectivity of WinCC OA’s driver stack to integrate a holistic system with several different data sources and targets.

How to Take Your Siemens PLC to Industry 4.0 – James Condon
Date: Wednesday, June 19
Time: 4:00 PM
Room: Red Rock 8

Agri-Inject is a leading manufacturer of fertigation equipment whose clients have equipment that is spread across hundreds of square miles. Using S7-1200s DMC developed a solution that allows Agri-Inject’s PLCs to have monitoring and control from an end user’s computer or phone.

DMC was already familiar with IoT applications through our other service offerings, but we had not applied IoT principles to PLCs. We found that outside of PLCs that the MQTT protocol is lightweight and widely adopted by cloud solutions providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Siemens PLCs do not currently have a driver for bidirectional MQTT communication, but they do allow for custom TCP communication.

We wrote a MQTT driver to run on S7-1200 and S7-1500 PLCs that is capable of bidirectional communication with a centralized server. Agri-Inject’s S7-1200 PLCs are now capable of communicating over MQTT to a service hosted on Azure. Users of Agri-Inject’s system are capable of managing their equipment through an intuitive web page, which was also developed by DMC. This gives users of Agri-Inject’s equipment more time to focus on other tasks and puts Agri-Inject ahead of their competitors. The technology stack developed for Agri-Inject is extensible and has already been applied to other projects. We have also made the S7-1200/1500 MQTT driver publicly available.

We hope to see you at the Siemens Automation Summit in June!

Learn more about DMC’s partnership with Siemens. 

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This tradition started in Boston and now every office takes a turn. Anyone can help write, direct, film, and cut together the videos.

In their monthly update, DMC Denver channels the Force. 

Check it out below or on our YouTube channel along with all of our other office update videos.

Find out what other fun things are going on at DMC.

Wish you were with us? Check out our Careers Page.

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All YOEs are different. Boston heads to the shore, Houston never misses the chance to go to a rodeo, and Denver heads to the ski slopes. The Denver YOE is very popular. DMSki started in 2010, well before we had plans to open an office in Denver, and continues to be the best largest YOE, and was the genesis of YOES.  Every year since 2010 the event gets bigger, and is still going strong.

Check out this video we put together a video highlighting all the fun that happens at our YOE known as DMSKI below or on our YouTube channel along with all of our hilarious office update videos.

Find out what other fun things are going on at DMC.

Wish you were with us? Check out our Careers Page.

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Fresh off of the excitement of ten more of our engineers passing the Siemens Technical Certification exam, we arrived in Florida with an extra spring in our step. The team enjoyed a week full of excellent presentations (including some from our own engineers), informative sessions, and advanced technology.

Check out our highlights from the summit!

Roadmap Sessions

Roadmap sessions featuring technical content were a highlight for DMC’s attendees. Our team got to experience new products that Siemens is rolling out in the areas of PLCs, WinCC, HMI, and TIA Portals. The roadmap sessions gave attendees the opportunity to talk about and interact with what’s new and upcoming in the Siemens ecosystem.

Solution Partner Ice-Cream Stand

Siemens Solution Partners, including DMC, hosted a display featuring Siemens digitalization solutions (such as digital twin and MindSphere conductivity) through the application of making delicious ice cream. It was cool to see the integration of these programs in a creative solution by Prism Systems, and the ice cream was delicious!

Networking Events

DMC had a lot of fun playing pirate and meeting new people during the summit’s networking events. Despite being bit by a parrot, Nick Shea thought the fire dancers and animals were a fun way to end the week!

View DMC Presentations:

Four DMC representatives were invited to present at the Automation Summit this year. You can view their full presentations via the links below.

Advanced Motion Control with Starter: Efficient, Flexible, Scalable – Andrew Crowley
Andrew Crowley also appeared on the IoT and Big Data Panel 

Siemens Open Library, SiVArc, and Automatic HMI Generation – John Sullivan

You can visit the Siemens Open Library and sign up to receive an email when updates are released.

Advanced Siemens Motion and Safety Using the S7-1517TF – Otto Gottlieb

Rapid Multi-Axis Motion Development with Siemens Libraries – Phil Schaffer

Thanks to all who attended for a fantastic week at the 2018 Siemens Automation Summit. We look forward to seeing what’s new in 2019!

As a proud Siemens Solution Partner, DMC is ready to step in with our extensive knowledge and assist. Learn more about DMC’s partnership with Siemens.

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The 2018 Automation Summit will feature over 50 user led presentations and trainings. DMC is proud to lead four presentations at this year’s event. If you’re attending the Automation Summit, stop by these sessions led by DMC!

Advanced Motion Control with Starter: Efficient, Flexible, Scalable – Andrew Crowley
June 26, 10 a.m.
Sinamics G and S Series Drives are a powerful and versatile platform, capable of doing all sorts of motion applications. With the latest hardware, there is also onboard IO, PID functionality, even logic within the drive. This presentation will describe these advanced features with practice applications. An attendee will learn best practices to scale their solutions, walk away with example code, and have step by step instructions. This presentation will feature demonstrations to explain: how to create on-board interlocks, write drive executable scripts, configure custom parameter views, and use cases for remote maintenance.

IoT and Big Data Panel – Andrew Crowley
June 26, 11 a.m.
DMC’s Andrew Crowley will join a panel to discuss understanding and managing the IoT and big data journey and the impact on your operations.

Automatic HMI Generation and Mapping: Using SiVArc – John Sullivan
June 26, 11 a.m.
The Siemens Open Library contains a collection of common objects to speed PLC development. These objects have been field tested and provide a great way to introduce people to Siemens Architecture and reusable objects. The integration of SIMATIC Visualization Architect (SiVArc) has provided a way to quickly generate and map objects on the HMI screen. The integration of SiVArc provides a much lower barrier of entry for new engineers to utilizing Siemens Libraries, including the Open Library. These objects will have pop-up faceplates and on screen Icons created on the HMI that map to all of the objects functionality through the click of a button. This also allows OEMs or users that are creating many duplicate screens to setup complex and flexible screens that can be auto populated using HMI design standards and common PLC Function Blocks. We will demonstrate time saving and efficiency generated by utilizing the automated HMI generation capabilities.

Advanced Siemens Motion and Safety Using the S7-1517TF – Otto Gottlieb
June 26, 4 p.m.
My solutions don’t always require advanced motion and safety, but when they do I use a Siemens S7-1517TF PLC. The motion capabilities of the S7-1500 series has expanded greatly in the last few years with the latest Tech CPUs and TIA Portal. Integrating this new motion technology with fail-safe technology allows the S7-1517TF to offer an alternative to the current SIMOTION controller and fail-safe PLC combination.

We will discuss how we are currently using S7-1517TF PLCs in TIA Portal to achieve coordinated motion and failsafe functionality. Our motion solution involves dynamically calculating cams, controlling non-linear proportional valves, and interfacing with 3rd party drives. This has required us to leverage Siemens-made libraries and customize how we work with the Motion Technology Objects in Portal including the use of PreServo and PostServo Interrupts and linking the Technology Objects to Datablocks. Our failsafe solution involves three safety zones and a KTP700F Mobile panel that we allow to easily move between zones. This safety system can integrate the three zones or it can separate them to allow each zone to function independently.

Rapid Multi-Axis Motion Development with Siemens Libraries – Phil Schaffer
June 27, 8 a.m.
Developing motion projects from scratch can be a time consuming and complex task. There are nearly thirty basic motion control blocks and navigating through them can be arduous. Luckily, Siemens motion library blocks make quickly developing motion projects a breeze by combining the relevant basic motion control blocks into a function which provides comprehensive functionality for a specific axis type. Up to 15 commonly used function blocks get wrapped into one for rapid development and robust control. Come learn how to efficiently build a multi-axis motion project from the ground up and explore useful blocks like LAxisCtrl, LCamHdl, and LDrivSafe. Developing motion projects with multiple motors has never been easier!

We hope to see you at the Siemens Automation Summit in June!

Learn more about DMC’s partnership with Siemens. 

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As happens in the development process, we slowly improved the DrinkBot over time. We started displaying it at career fairs in Colorado to help grow the team. We also took it to events in New York, Houston, Seattle, and Manufacturing in America in Detroit. For now, the DrinkBot’s home in DMC’s Denver office ready to entertain visitors as we give tours.

The DrinkBot is an excellent tool for highlighting multiple factory automation technologies offered by DMC while serving a variety of drinks – anything from cocktails to Italian sodas. We could have simplified the DrinkBot, but its intention was to show off a bunch of cool capabilities and to demonstrate a lot of DMC and the Siemens S7-1200 platforms’ potential uses and abilities.

DMC’s DrinkBot utilizes a Siemens S7-1200 PLC, 7″ Comfort Panel, Siemens G120, and Siemens 1FK7 Servo Motor with DRIVE-CLiQ encoder to control the operation. The DrinkBot provides eight different alcohols or syrups and six different mixers for a large variety of drink options. Without further ado, let me dig into each part!

The Brain

The brain of our bot is a Siemens S7-1200 PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). Compact and inexpensive, the controller is capable enough to control all the motion axis, valves, and other organs. We used the Siemens S7-1215, which has more than enough onboard IO to manage the entire process. It controls six valves for drink mixers, a solenoid valve for alcohol dispensing, a variety of sensors to ensure everything is in the right place, PTO (Pulse Train Output) output to move the rotary access (which selects the alcohol), and ProfiNET Communication to the G120 to control the linear axis.

The Body

The DrinkBot also has two limbs powered by servo motors. The spinney one with bottles is controlled with a PTO and is utilizing built-in IO on the S7-1200.

It works like this: the PLC generates a precisely-timed sequence of high-speed step/direction pulses for the motor controller to get to an exact position at the right speed. Thanks to the accurate position control, our DrinkBot never spills your drinks or creates a mess.

The other limb is used to move your cup around. A VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) controls this limb. It talks to the bot’s brain over a standard protocol called PROFINET. VFDs are usually used to control simple AC motors, but the DrinkBot’s is better because it is using the Siemens G120 for full closed-loop position control! Rather than a standard AC motor, it controls a full servo motor with DRIVE-CLiQ encoder feedback!

The Faces

The only way you can tell that our DrinkBot isn’t human is by looking at its face – it has two of them! 

The one with lit buttons is a Siemens SIMATIC HMI key panel. It is an inexpensive device that provides ordering options utilizing PROFINET and is very convenient for ordering drinks with the single push of a button! It also has multi-color buttons that are used to create a light show. In an industrial environment, this HMI can look a lot more serious.

The other face with a fancy graphical screen is a 7″ SIMATIC Comfort Panel. It stores the drink recipes and allows you to choose from a large variety of preselected options or to create your own with whatever ingredients you prefer. 

Additionally, it provides the ability to manually move all pieces of the DrinkBot so that we can fix and identify issues caused by shipping. It utilizes advanced scripting to allow for a wide variety of dynamic buttons, letting the most popular recipes be displayed first, enabling us to move the display location different drink recipes quickly.

Here it is in action:

Summary of Technology

• Siemens S7-1200 PLC
• Siemens 1FK7 Servo Motor
• Siemens G120 VFD
• SIMATIC Comfort Panel
• TIA Portal
• WinCC Comfort
• Custom Panel built by Palmer DCS

To see how we can help you get started on a project, check out our Siemens PLC programming services and contact us today!

Learn more about DMC’s partnership with Siemens.

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V2 contains the following updates:

• Added SiVArc properties to all WinCC Comfort/Advanced faceplates
• Added SiVArc screen rules and master screen copies to the “Master Copies”
• Updated example project to have SiVarc functionality and added a HMI to the example project to show the auto-generation
• Updated all 1500 blocks to use HW addresses
• All supported blocks compatible with 1500 and 1200
  • No more separate types for 1200
• Separated 300/400 blocks into a separate library (available in previous versions)
• Added new FIFO blocks, including prioritized FIFO with optimized sorting
• Replaced WinCC Professional popup faceplates with screens which will use tag prefixed UDT fields for processing. Tag prefix will be assigned to the parent Screen Window that loads screen.
• Added Flow Totalizer control which combines an Analog Input with an Integrator to output the Integral value over a given time window.
• Minor bug fixes

The Siemens Open Library is a free, open source library that was developed by DMC, Inc. in partnership with Siemens Industry. We hope the Siemens Open Library is a resource for consistency, usability, and faster development for the Siemens community.

Please submit any custom objects to DMC by emailing them to Contribute@OpenPLCLibrary.com.

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V14 SP1 contains the following updates:

• Added Tested Faceplates for WinCC Professional
• Updated PID to utilize Data Block Parametrization
• Fixed bug with fcSwapWords
• Updated Example Project
• Added User Submitted Modbus RTU/TCP Library
• Ported Modbus library to V14 SP1 – Alpha release
• Added OBs with built-in diagnostic messaging to Master Copies
• Updated code base for many blocks with improved V14 SP1 features

An Alpha release of the WinCC OA Open Library has also been added. WinCC OA 3.15 updates:

• Alpha release for use with v1.4 of Siemens Open Library for either V13 SP1 or V14
• Functionality against actual PLC objects not yet tested
• PID Graph not yet functional

The Siemens Open Library is a free, open source library that was developed by DMC, Inc. in partnership with Siemens Industry. We hope the Siemens Open Library is a resource for consistency, usability, and faster development for the Siemens community.

​Please submit any custom objects to DMC by emailing them to Contribute@OpenPLCLibrary.com.

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