Abb and Siemens PLc Comms ???

Hey guys.

I've been currently tasked with a project where I have to communicate with three devices, Omron Vision Controller, Abb IRC5 Controller, and a Siemens S7 PLC


I am pretty confident I can communicate between the the vision and the plc, But i have never communicated between a Siemens plc and a abb robot,

Can anyone recommend a favourable configuration i.e. ethernet over profibus...

I need to send detailed integers/reals s discreet I/O is not an option

is one more favourable than the other and if so why ??

Thanks in advance for any info you guys can provide

I'd recommend Profinet over Profibus, if your PLC and the controller support it.

Some robot controllers also support Profisafe, which allows the PLC to communicate safety to the robot. I don't know if ABB supports this or not; you might need to hardwire that part.

cheers,

thanks for your input

This may sound like a stupid question but Now that I want to use the profinet comm method I will need to buy a profinet card for the abb robot controller, as Profinet and ethernet I/p are incompatible?

taward31 said:

This may sound like a stupid question but Now that I want to use the profinet comm method I will need to buy a profinet card for the abb robot controller, as Profinet and ethernet I/p are incompatible?

Click to expand...

Short answer: Maybe, I don't know.

Long answer:
They are different protocols, yes, although a device could hypothetically speak them at the same time. Both use Ethernet.

I'm not familiar with that specific robot controller, and I couldn't find any details of its communications options in the data sheet on their website. On some devices, switching from EIP to PN could require changing a card. On other devices, switching protocols is as simple as changing a parameter.

Hopefully someone else knows the answer, although ABB could probably tell you as well.

They are 2 different protocols.

The solution I prefer is what you stated.
Buy a Profinet card for the ABB robot

Another option is to get a gateway module that would be a profinet slave to the Siemens PLC and a Ethernet/IP Master to the robot. But this route is still buying a new device, gives another device that can fail, hosting an additional protocol on the system and you will need to buy a Ethernet/IP master license for the device.

At least that is my experience with Hilscher Gateway devices. Great product and worked well for me. My issue was the device I needed to use in My Siemens machine only supported Ethernet/IP.