Bailey Graphics /Net 90

Hello all,

I will soon be working with a Bailey Controlled DCS system that is using Net 90.

I have two questions:

1. Is Net 90 simply a com packabe similar to RSLinx?

2. What type of graphics package is normally used?

From what I can gather the most popular package is WonderWare butI am not sure if this is correct. I have been asked to create the graphics for a system we built last summer. The DCS and HMI's were to be done on site by local (4000 miles away)people. The local guys are running into time issues and I've been asked to help out.

Thanks in advance.

Is this Bailey System 6? I haven't worked with it for a while, and (possibly because of that) I don't know Net 90. But if it is System 6, it has it's own integrated graphics System. It's even longer since I used Wonderware (ten years +!) so I can't comment on any similarities or differences, but as far as I remember, while being a bit cludgy and non-windows-conform (all the systems I worked with ran on Unix-based work-stations) the System 6 graphics package is pretty easy to learn and get used to.

Bailey Net90 is quite old (first released in 1980 and development finished in 1988) is now virtually unsupported by the factory. Bailey has been bought out by ABB in 1999 and although ABB will tell you they do support Net90 their main interest is to get you to convert to one of their latest offerings. The technology is old but parts are usually available as old stock or re-furbs. There are quite a lot of smaller companies that specialise in maintaining these systems but at some stage you will need to look at a complete replacement. Most companies do this. Plug for AB. Rockwell have a conversion package that will convert NET90 to ControlLogix and they even make adaptors to fit the Bailey wiring interface modules that then plug into 1756 IO.
Regards Alan Case

Following on from Alan's excellent points, it just so happens that my current major project is the replacement of a Bailey Network90 DCS on a large water treatment plant with ControlLogix/Citect.

1. He is correct in that factory support for the Network 90 is declining rapidly. It has taken ABB two months to get a specialist on site to fix a problem we could not deal with ourselves. Even then the guy has taken several days longer than he anticipated. It is not an easy system to work with.

2. We looked very closely at ABB's migration path to bring it up to current technology...the Industrial IT system. What became clear was that even if we did a "transitional upgrade", within five years we would have to replace any remaining hardware with ABB's latest offering's anyhow ( which is Alan Case's point as well). For us we found it just wasn't worth it, and we are getting far better value replacing the whole thing with ControlLogix.

3. Just to answer your specific question about the graphics package, the Bailey system uses a package called "Conductor" that is fully integrated with the system. It is not a standalone HMI like Wonderware. However there are some HMI packages that do have drivers to the Bailey DCS. These are typically slowish serial connections via something called a "CIU Module". onto Plant Loop, which itself only runs at about 38kbaud.

You then get involved in huge amounts of configuring things called "Point Tables" and writing "Exception Blocks" to get data out of the processors and onto Plant Loop. It is very tedious and error prone work, and worse still most of our older processors have run out of available "Blocks" (effectively program memory), so we have hit a hard limit on how much more we can do with the system. Our one person who is reasonably proficient with the DCS labours for days over modest tasks, whereas we do the equivalent things on our CLX processors in less than an hour or two.

In our case we have been using Citect alongside Conductor for several years now in order to extract information that we want to pull into our global system. Works ok, except it is slow, and worse still about every 10th time we re start the Citect project, the CIU crashes the whole Plant Loop as well as every processor in the system and we go into crisis mode to restart the plant.

Overall we are finding the Bailey DCS increasingly fragile, inflexible and hard to maintain. If I were you guys I would be looking long and hard at ditching it altogether.

We use Bailey Net90 as well.

Although I, as an electrician, do not have access to the Bailey DCS, I am interested in this thread as there has been rumours for a while that we were replacing it. I think the guy that does all the Bailey work calls his graphical interface "BaileyCad". To communicate to the rest of the plant's Modicon PLCs we rely on a GPI (general purpose interface?) that is extremely slow and limited compared to the ModbusPlus network connecting all the PLCs. Bailey I/O modules fail several times yearly. We keep a lot of spares. Input polling scan time is up to about 3 seconds I'm told. I've heard we are looking at Modicon Quantum PLCs linked together and IFix HMI but the project didn't survive the budget cuts.

Brian.

I was just involved in a project to replace an existing Remote Bailey PCU controlling a baghouse. It controlled the screw conveyors, pulsing system for shakedown, fan louvers, fan motor vibration, temperatures, etc. We were having communication problems occasionally which would cause the remote rack to lose communication from time to time. This would cause the fume fan to shutdown. The fume fan is used for casthouse fume control on a Blast Furnace and when it shuts down it is not good. It is classed as an enviromental incident and I believe there are fines involved.

We looked at various options including replacing Bailey hardware, and we settled on replacing it with a Control Logix. The main reason we chose Control Logix was price. It was much less expensive.

We replaced it with a Control Logix processor and the conversion went very well. We managed to get in done during a shutdown. We had 48 hours from the time the fan was shutdown until the furnace had to start back up. Before it could start up the fan had to be running.

It has been running for over a month and has not shutdown once.

Also our Instrumentation people have replaced the Bailey operator terminals with a "Delta V" system. It uses all the existing Bailey hardware and just replaces the opertor terminals.

See the following link to Delta V
http://www.easydeltav.com/solutions/dcs/baileyflyer.pdf

Kim

Thanks for the replies. I had s sneaking suspicion... Anyway, I am free of that particular task. The local guy decided that he would finish the project. The folks that are running the lab we built are having a hard time getting the donated Bailey system off the ground. Ours is on single loop controllers. They wanted DCS.

The train set is on hold. I won't have any time to play this summer. I'll be glad to finish our DH+ network. Its only 14 nodes, all easy runs. Most of my time will be getting as much of my part of our program set up into "blocks" for modular trainng off site, and on the WEB.

I need to visit that conglomeration you have, geez.

You are most welcome. Anytime is fine, Friday's are best.

I'll PM contact info to you.