Contrologix L63, 1756-EN2T, Hirschmann, Control Tecniques

The title sums up the control system setup. L63 processors with 1756-EN2T for Ethernet I/O which includes over 150 Control
Techniques drives. The Hirschmann setup starts with the MICE Media modules for public and private networks. From main CPU panel, the ethernet feeds go to Hirschmann managed switches. Control Techniques drives with ethernet modules are connected to the managed switches. The processor can see the drives but is giving an error. I don't have the specific hex code or message but it is dealing with invalid reply. Anyone have any experience with this setup? I will be more specific tomorrow if we don't get it solved. Thanks for any suggestions.

My experience with CT Unidrives on EtherNet/IP has been uniformly negative, due both to reliability and customer expectations. I hope your experience is better.

Explain what you mean about the processor "seeing the drives". Describe the Generic I/O Module configuration you're using for these drives. Do any of the drives connect at all ? Are there any other I/O devices on this network ?

The PLC system has two L63 processors, one EWEB module for public network devices such as the HMI's (Panelview pluses), and six EN2T modules for private network devices (Control Techniques drives and several AENT point I/O racks. I too am not a fan of the Control Techniques drives. They are extremely flakey but this customer has standardized on them and I guess they have been reliable enough to retain. The point I/O is basic IB4 and OB4E modules handling simple pb's and solenoids, etc. The drives are running conveyors for the most part so there is an ethernet map consisting of 22 DINT's for drive inputs and 22 DINT's for drive outputs. 32 bits are reserved by RSLogix even though the drive words are 16 bits. So the IP addresses assigned to the drives as well as other module identification information can be seen by RSLogix (or RSLinx) as active devices. This info would have to be read from the ethernet map file (*.pkg) that has been set up in the drive's ethernet modules. The error message appears at the bottom of the window which I believe is a status window for the particular IP device. I will be able to be far more specific tomorrow. I am working on setting up the 180+ drives in the system which is a very arduous, time consuming task. Another guy is doing the RSLogix programming and I wanted him to at least cause a motor to rotate from the PLC.

I recently did a project with 150+ A-B PowerFlex drives on EtherNet/IP. Even with the easy link between RSLogix 5000 and Drive Executive, it sure is a lot of work to commission that many drives. I guess we're spoiled compared to setting drives up from the keypad.

One useful thing I did when commissioning that many drives is to inhibit all the I/O connections by default, then un-inhibit them as they come online for commissioning. This keeps the Logix unconnected message buffers from getting too busy trying to establish connections to devices that aren't on the network yet.

The problem turned out to be incorrect instance settings. The Hirschmann switches had nothing to do with it. 22 DINT's were set aside for inputs (instance 100)and 22 DINT's for outputs (instance 101) The size should have been 88 bytes for each but was entered at 8 bytes for each. The person who setup the .pkg file for the Ethernet module for the drive had made the error. Once corrected everything worked fine. Thanks for the suggestions and file this one away in case anyone else runs into this.