Networking: Digiforce and Mitsubishi PLC Q

So, I've run into a bit of a difficult situation for one of my jobs.

The client wants us to network the PLC (a Q PLC), the HMI (a GOT), and the Digiforce (model 9310 /w ethernet, no modbus) over ethernet.

The problem is that as far as I can tell, there's no way to actually communicate between the Digiforce and the PLC/HMI... They want to be able to store force data in the PLC and be able to monitor it when they need to.

I've got very little knowledge on what the PLC is actually capable of as far as ethernet communications is concerned, but I've figure out what would be necessary to communicate with the Digiforce. The Digiforce supports ANSI x3.28 A4, and I have a copy of the manual for interfacing with it over ethernet using that standard, but as far as I can tell there's no way to program the PLC to be able to communicate that way with the Digiforce... Is there any way to send raw packets over ethernet from the PLC? Has anyone done anything like this before?

Is there maybe a converter somewhere out there that would convert the MC protocol messages into x3.28 messages? I understand that it would be possible for me to make a computer program capable of doing that, but I don't have the time to do that, and its something we are not prepared to attempt.

Really, nobody has anything to say about this? Damn, I was really hoping someone here could shed some light on things. Right now the plan seems to be to find a way to get the computer data logging from the digiforce and find a way to get that information into the program so it can be accessible to the PLC through something like an OPC setup or some similar manner.

Try www.rtaautomation.com

Ok here's an update: the Digiforce can save it's data into Excel sheets in two different ways: It can save an Excel sheet which is updated with every measurement, or it can save individual excel sheets for each measurement.

I need to find a way to send data from either of these to the PLC... I think both of those present a problem though, since it adds a line to the end of the main Excel sheet every measurement (meaning that if I wanted to send the current mesaurement I would have to detect when a new measurement has been made and then move down to a new line and send that to the PLC) and multiple files would require some way to detect when a measurement has been made and find the file to send the data to the PLC.....

Still, it's one step farther than I was before...

My boss is sending an email to see how the client was doing this with some other machines (in another division of the company)... It may not lead anywhere though, because they might be simply monitoring the data that the Digiforce logs stuff to, rather than actually moving it to the PLC/HMI...