Long time lurker; first time poster.
I have been reading this forum for a long time and it has helped me make decisions and purchases. So my purpose for this post is 2-fold:
1) Give back to this community by way of ideas and options for others to use.
2) Show off my work that I feel pretty proud of. (I don’t have a lot of friends that can relate or appreciate what I have done.)
I was sold on Oneida for a long time, but I read a few reviews and decided to go with the 3 HP Gorilla.
Attachment 75957
When it came to design the ducting, I wanted to combine the convenience of Ecogates with my limited knowledge of controllers and electronics. I read in this forum that Ecogate gates seem to work well (albeit expensive) but tool sensing can be unreliable and not very flexible. I knew a little about programmable logic controllers (plc) and ladder logic, and my research into the Ecogates lead me to believe it was feasible to create my own control of the gates and the dust collector.
Attachment 75961
I acquired a scrap piece of equipment that contained 90% of what I would need for control (PLC, motor relay, reversing relay’s, 24Vdc power supply, control cabinet, proximity sensors, junction blocks). If you had to buy all this stuff new it would probably be several grand. Used from e-Bay would probably be under $1000.
Attachment 75958
If you are interested in trying this yourself here are (2) hurdles you might have.
1) The gate requires a .5 to 1 second power interruption prior to changing it’s status (open à close or close à open). This drove me to have 2 relays per gate - one for reversing and one for power interruption. ( I know there are relays that would allow me to do this with 1, but these were free) This took a lot of head scratching and a couple calls to Ecogate. When I tested it on the bench it worked fine by reversing the wires, but when I hooked up to the relays, it didn’t work. (That is when I called ecogate and they told me about the required delay.)
Attachment 75959
2) For sensing the machine “on” condition, I tried the Ecogate vibration sensors and couldn’t read a thing. Then I tried their Torriodal sensors and could only get 200K ohms resistance during “tool on”. And that was with 3 wire wraps through the sensor. (My plc requires about 3500 ohms before it could trip an input.) So I went on-line to Digi-Key and found a sensor for $18 that works real well. I wired the current sensor to a common plug mounted on the outer skin of all of my machines. I also wired a common socket near all of my Ecogate drop locations, so now I can move any of my tools around and just plug them into power, signal, and flex hose, and start working.
I also have a Floor Sweep and regular blast gate (for sucking around the shop with a hose) on a “Y” branch that are controlled by a foot switch. The logic requires that at least one of those be open (sensed via a proximity sensor) before the Ecogate opens and the Vacuum turns on. I also wrote the program so 1 click turns on the vacuum 3 minutes, 2 clicks do 6 minutes, and 3 clicks do 9 minutes.
The rest is wiring, configuring, programming. (I don’t mean to downplay this portion, because it was a lot of work, but unless you are into this, it might be boring or worthy of a separate post).
Attachment 75962
I know many of you would consider this to be overkill; and you would be right. After all for a 1 person hobby shop, all you need is a remote switch and manual blast gates. But in my case the journey was just as much fun as the destination. I had a lot of fun learning how to set-up a system and program the plc.
My message is: You can use your own PLC with Ecogates and make it highly customized.
