OT - Slightly... Simolink

I am trying to give myself a heads up here...

I have been reading all the info that I can get my hands on from Siemens support site, but I would like to know if anyone out there has any experience with Siemens Simolink for controlling drives, either from an S7 PLC or even better an S5.

This is what we hope to do..

Have 1 drive (master drive) on the profibus network (IM308C master, yes this is an S5) then have 3 other drives linked to that one via Simolink. The way, I understand, this will work is, via profibus you write the control word to the master drive, the master then 'forwards' this control word to it's slaves via the simolink. That's seems fair enough. But, what I would also like to do is read the status words of ALL the drives, not just the master. this is what I can't fathom out.

Any help anyone?

Paul

The above is a basic description of the system we hope to put in place, if anyone replies and requires more info, then I will post it.

Paul,

It should be very easy- if you could post the .dnl files we can look through it and map the status words to the drive with profibus. What PPO type is used for the profibus drive?. Do you have 3 more words avilable for the other drive status words?? You may have to modify the IM308 config.

JRW

Thanks for the response.

This little gem was dropped on my desk on Friday, hence the lack of infromation (and knowledge) on my part. The drives in question are sitting, still in their boxes in our stores. They haven't been paramatised yet, so they are still in their default state. I could post the .DNL file for their default settings if you want, or you might have to wait until they are installed and being commisioned. But, by then it might be a bit late as Siemens are doing the commisioning. As I said in my first post, I am trying to give myself a heads up on this. The Siemens guy coming down to do this work is notoriously secretive, he likes to 'keep himself in work'. I am hoping to have this setup running on our test rig before he arrives.

I haven't decided on what PPO to use yet, I thought that it might depend on how I have to read back the status words from the slave drives.

At the moment we have one drive running 4 motors, these are on our gantry cranes, so there are four motors per side, thus two drives. The load sharing is very poor and any uneven driven wheel wear causes problems with the motor loadings (some of you who have been around this forum for a good few years, 4 years ago I think, may remember my posting a question regarding the load sharing, DickDV gave a good answer at the time). This modification is designed to overcome those load sharing problems caused by the various wheel sizes. So, as I stated, at the moment we have two drives for the long travel (gantry), these will be replaced in the configuration by the two new 'master' drives, so I should only have to replace these in the IM308C configuration, I am not sure how much we read back from the existing drives at the moment, I will have to check on Monday when I am back at work.

Let me know what information you need and I will see what I can do.

Paul