AB PLC as an Ethernet/IP Slave

I have a system with a Motoman robot that is an Ethernet/IP master linked with two Red Lion G3's that are setup as Ethernet/IP slaves. I want to add an Allen Bradley PLC to the system that can exchange data with the Motoman. Ideally I would like to setup the PLC as another Ethernet/IP slave to the Motoman robot so I would not have to reconfigure the whole system.

Can any AB PLC be configured as an Ethernet/IP slave?

I talked to on of the Motoman techs I know.
He said that depending on which model the controller is it may be able to be both master and a slave. He said you need the model , serial and firmware of the controller. Then call the Motoman support number and they can help you determine if that model can do both.

I couldn't find anything on making an AB a slave.
This isn't the way I would do it but it is an option. You can use DeviceNet or RIO. I know you said they would rather have a SLC. So those are native protocols in that family.

Hope that helps.

I have been looking for the same thing:

I started working with Schneider PLCs and they have Ethernet/IP support now. Trying to make connections to AB Logix controllers has been a challenge - I have seen no support for any AB controller to be a Class 1 Implicit slave so communication is always one-way - from the AB PLC as the scanner to the Schneider hardware as adapter (which supports both adapter and scanner functionality).

I have only found the following ways to communicate with the Logix5000 programmed controllers as a server:

1. Produced/consumed tags mechanism (so as server, that would be a produced tag on the Logix device I think)
2. Explicit messaging - native tag addressing or if you map some things in Logix5000 I think you can use PCCC over EIP to get at tags mapped to data files.

If the robot supports EDS files you may be able to read a produced tag (likely an array of data to?) from the Logix controller - I know I could from the Schneider Ethernet/IP hardware using a particular EDS file. If you only want to read values perhaps that is enough. This is limited in functionality as there is no way to write values.

Forgot to add that you could write to tags in the AB PLC through the G3 - not quite as clean from an architecture standpoint, but you can use IO messaging to the G3 then have that use Native Tag Addressing or whatever to the AB PLC.

Ethernet IP Slave

Hello,
I have a YouTube video that shows how to setup remote IO with an Ethernet/IP Master.

http://youtu.be/y7cL5IHcR20