Help! Comminucation Nightmare between AB, Motoman, Mitsubishi

Hello. New to this forum and it appears to be an excellent source of information. I will be installing a new robot cell in the start of '05 that will have 6 machines with Mitsubishi PLCs, 5 Motoman robots with NX100 controllers, and an AB PLC to serve as the traffic cop for the robots doing the material handling. The NX100 controllers can use DeviceNet and Ethernet for communication needs. I am searching for suggestions to try to get these devices to communicate on a single network, like DeviceNet, to eliminate the extensive amount of wiring that would otherwise be needed. I am kind of in the infancy stages of this project (drooling all over myself!) and just look for some helpful advice. Thanks

i just finished two robotic cells using Fanuc robots and Mitsubishi PLCs. I had to use profibus...

You may find something from SST (link X-Link) or from Prosoft

DeviceNet would be nicest, as DeviceNet is native to both AB and NX100 controllers.

'Ethernet' is not really a standard protocol-vise, so do not count on getting all these things to communicate together over Ethernet.

Problem is the Mitsubishi PLC. Only MELSECNET is mentioned on their website (which by the way sucks). Maybe panic mode can tell a bit more about that Profibus option with Mitsubishi.

It would be awkward to go via Profibus, though it may be necessary because of the Mitsubishi PLC.

Mitsubishi have an excellent DeviceNet card for their A/Q series PLC's but I have only used this as a master. I am not sure whether it can be used as a slave.
regards
Andy.

Thanks for the input. I had seen that Mitsubishi has a DeviceNet card but I had the same concerns setting it up as a slave. I hope to give it a shot. Worst case, I'll do some old school wiring from the Mitsubishi PLCs to the AB and just use DeviceNet from the AB to the Motomans.

A bit off topic, but Jesper's comment wound me up . I think Melsecnet (the H version running on fiber-optic) is a really nice network to use. It's very fast (no horribly obese TCP/IP), easy to configure (most of the time you don't even need to write a program to handle comms) and fault-tolerant(fibre-optic loop/standby master). The downside is that it can only be used by Mitsubishi PLCs (not a big problem in this country!) and the documentation sucks .

Wow, I didnt mean to let down MELSECNET.
I meant to say that Mitsubishi's website is one of the poorest ones I have ever seen.
For example, where IS the info on DeviceNet comms that both Andybr and mhession mentions ?

DeviceNET

Hi All,

I Agree with JesperMP not the nicest site on earth but hey, DeviceNET definitely the way to go, the Master/Slave configuration can be setup in various ways in Mitsubishi.

I would use GX Developer .. easy to set-up, did a project on mitsubishi and DeviceNET a while back , a first timer for both, wasnt that tough at all...

I agree that the website for Mitsubishi is below average to say the least. That's why I am here looking for answers. I could use a Mitsubishi as the traffic cop for the robot cell, but I really prefere programming an AB and just hate the thought of trying to use a Mitsubishi with the robots. The AB software is much easier and the support here in the states is superior. I've been using the ABs for the last 5 years and really like them. Maybe I'm just being too stubborn.
bonkhead

I would also recommend to stay away from profibus in this case.

Mitsubishi and Fanuc had no idea where to start and manuals
are really poor. Another thing I didn't like is trouble to get
the GSD files and that you MUST use GX Configurator DP.
After dealing with some Mitsubishi jewels like the motion configurator,
I really like to do everything in ladder.

The biggest problem was typing in the lenghty code sample from the
Mitsubishi manual. Everything appeared to be working fine (green lights,
no errors, etc.) but all my slaves ware dead.

After pulling my hair for two days trying to figure out what is
wrong with the damn slaves I finaly removed the Mitsubishi code
and wrote my own rung (later this rung grew into three rungs).
So everything is running perfect now.

It looks like manual was not updated in a while and some of the
code is now moved to the firmware of the card. Who knows,
I sure don't care about it anymore even though I was sweating
for couple of days.

If the AB PLC is a controllogix then that scanner can support the multi-master/slave capabilities of the DeviceNet network. I worked on a project 3-4 years ago where a sister company was using a motion controller that insisted on being the DeviceNet master, but our ControlLogix was supposed to be the overall traffic cop. So we made a portion of our scanner data table a slave to the motion controller, but everything else on the network was a slave to the ControlLogix. It actually worked out very well.

Darren