ABB ACS550 Interface with Allen Bradley SLC500 PLC? 1

[dpc]

Has anyone ever tried to get an ABB ACS550 VFD to communicate with an Allen-Bradley SLC500 PLC via Ethernet port?

I'm indirectly involved - in a weak moment, I believed the ABB salesmen - and now the I&C guy at the site is telling me it is impossible. Of course, he seems to have waited until everything was installed and ready to run before he started working on it.

We did pull in some hard-wiring as a backup, so they will be able to get it running, but if anyone has any experience with this combination, I'd be interested.

 

[Laplacian]

I haven't tried that combination, but unless the ABB drive has a TCP/IP port I don't think it will work. It may be as simple as installing a MODBUS over TCP/IP option card in the ABB drive though.

 

[dpc]

The drive has an Ethernet port - they bought that option. I think it's more of a protocol issue, but I haven't spent too much time researching it. A-B PLCs have their own communications protocol.

I need to determine exactly what comm module was provided for the ABB drive....

 

[controlsdude]

You might want to look at Prolinx communications modules. I do not think its a direct communications link. Other comms converter company is sst woodhead in canada.

That combination is probably a long shot and the needed converter would at least be a $500 dollar card in the drive, then the scanner card in the plc rack, if the ABB does not talk ab CIP protocol.

 

[ozmosis]

You might want to read this document from ABB:

http://library.abb.com/GLOBAL/SCOT/...002FA896/$File/FAQ_FB_ABB_Drives_20070216.pdf

it indicates that what you require is possible but depends on the option module you have with the drive.
It might be worth waiting for DickDV to respond as he is, I think, an ABB man.

 

[dpc]

Thanks for the link - that's helpful. We're trying to sort it out today. I know what module is in the ABB drive (RETA-01), but not quite sure which SLC 500 PLC they have. Seems like the Ethernet/IP using Common Industrial Protocol should be workable, but it always seems easy when I'm sitting here in my office.

Dave

 

[dpc]

Just an update - we determined that the PLC programmer was trying to communicate with the VFD using the wrong message block format. This was partly because he had an old version of the A-B programming software. The newer version provides an Explicit Message block format that should work over Ethernet/IP. He was using a message format that is used to communicate between A-B PLCs.

If this ever actually works, I'll post another update in case anyone is interested.

 

[DickDV]

While I am an ABB drive rep and certified startup tech, I do very little communications work. Having said that, I am aware of a number of RETA-01 modules working successfully.

From what I'm told, when communicating over TCP/IP, you have the Ethernet base and then various protocols on top of that. Similar, I suppose, to RS485 with various protocol overlays.

The result is that having the Ethernet module in place is only half the battle. The second half is getting the two ends to speak the same language. The referenced CIP may be such a protocol.

That's about as far as I go with Fieldbus. Sorry.

 

[controlsdude]

If your using cip as the protocol

this is true from a contrologix setup. I have not done a slc for 5 years. I know you have to use the map plc/slc memory map in the logix processors. Saying that statement.

In the SLC505 this would be transparent to you since your using the ethernet message setup and this is stated by the setup

but On the VFD drive side (assuming this would be similar to a contrologix setup), if it is using the cip protocol we had to map the memory location to talk in the SLC ethernet message format.

All this should be in the documentation.