Maxing out a DL06?

Hello,
I am new to the forum and am just getting back to PLC's after not using them since the early 90's. My client wants to use a master DL06 to control up to 125 slave DL06's. After researching I am finding that the e-comm module is limited to 90 addresses using modbus-tcp. I would like opinions about this approach, I don't think its the best way to go. The slaves are a simple pump/tank application and each of the slaves will only have 6 DI and 7 DO.
Hope to hear from you,
Paul

If I were doing it...
I would use a 205 with a 260 CPU as the master. And then use 2 ECOM100's in the 205 base. That will allow you up to 180 slaves.

It looks like you could use the two ECOM100s approach with the DL06 line too. I don't see any restrictions on slot number or power supply problems with this approach.

Brian

So is this type of communication common, to me it just doesn't seem like the best way to go. Seems like a beckhoff bus terminal network would be cleaner.

I don't know how common it is. Seems fairly straight forward to me.

I've not used Beckhoff before so I can't compare the two.

Are the slaves just for i/o or will they be executing logic for each station or will all primary control logic reside in the master?

What is the purpose for the master? If it is just data collection the a pc running dataworx http://www.automationdirect.com/adc...x_Ethernet_Data_Logging_Software/DataWorx_PLC might be a better solution. Choose the package to support the amount of ecom modules that you need. You can use multiple ecom modules but they must all reside in the local chasis so that will be your limitation.

Thank for the tip, I just checked it out and I didn't see anything about being able to write any control logic, just collecting data. I'm not familiar with plc HMI, can the HMI have logical control?

That depends on the Hmi some can and some can't. Most don't and that is frowned upon in general. Best to keep all logic in the plc,the hmi just as a simple intercae into the plc for controlling the equipomet,diagnoistics,etc

Sounds like you need to nail down the specs. Most cases a central plc with many slaves is what is called a data concentrator and it just colets data then pushes it to an enterprise system vs the enterprise system collecting from each slave it can collect from the data concentrator plc in large blocks and is in general a faster method. If the slaves are plcs then let them do the control.