Micrologix and Profibus is it possible ?

Hi All,

Our customer has one of our existing machines which is controlled by a small AB Micrologix 1200.

He has a main system that has a profibus network and has asked if we can connect out machine's Micrologix 1200 to it so he can exchange some basic i/o (run / stop signals etc.)

Is this possible with this small PLC ? Is there some kind of add-on I can get which will allow connection to an existing profibus network ?

Regards,

Mark Hammond

There is for the SLC and control logix, but I don't think there is anything for the micrologix.

Prosoft Tenologies makes Profibus cards for the Micrologix1500 and CompactLogix, but as far as I know, it would not work for the 1200.

Plenty of stand-alone protocol converters, Anybus, Red Lion Data Station, etc. would be able to do that job, but they would not be "bolt on" so you'd have to program them separately from the Micrologix and the Profibus Master device, whatever that is. Here's my favorite for ease of use...
http://www.redlion.net/Products/HumanMachineInterface/DataStationPlus/DataStationPlus.html

The profibus interface card adds a bit of cost to this unit, but mapping tags between interfaces is really easy using what they call "Gateway Blocks".

Thanks for all the replies. It looks like it may be quite an expensive solution for this particular job as the original PLC was only a few hundred quid. I'll have another chat with our customer and see how important this link is.

Thanks again guys,

Mark Hammond.

The Micrologix works fine for alot of low IO machinery and process control.If you own the RSLogix 500 programming software it can be used with all of the micrologix lines.There are option modules and network communications like DeviceNet available for the Micrologix products as well...