AB 1305 & 1336 Migration

Dear All,

A customer owns a production line that is based on PLC5 controllers & 1305/1336 drives.

Most of the drives are coupled with the PLCs via a 1203-GD1 Scanport module. The problem is that the 1305s & 1336s started giving trouble due to their age.
I am looking into a migration strategy that replaces the drives without having to alter anything on the PLC side. Is this feasible?

Does anyone have a suggestion on where to start looking at?

Regards

grnick50 said:

Dear All,

A customer owns a production line that is based on PLC5 controllers & 1305/1336 drives.

Most of the drives are coupled with the PLCs via a 1203-GD1 Scanport module. The problem is that the 1305s & 1336s started giving trouble due to their age.
I am looking into a migration strategy that replaces the drives without having to alter anything on the PLC side. Is this feasible?

Does anyone have a suggestion on where to start looking at?

Regards

Click to expand...

I believe that the PowerFlex Architecture Class drives still offer a RIO communication option module. I have not used one, so I cannot tell whether you will need to map the RIO points differently in the PLC, but even if you must change those, it should be much easier than scrapping the RIO interface and replacing it with something else.

If your existing RIO applications are doing a lot of fancy footwork to present the entire drive parameters list to an HMI, then the rework could be considerable, but for basic drive operations, it should be pretty simple.

http://ab.rockwellautomation.com/Drives/Communication/PowerFlex-Remote-IO-Adapter

I have done this with PF 700 series and PF 750 series. The PF 750 series is the newest drive but is a real PITA to get working on RIO. The PF 700 drives are not so bad but you do have to do slight remapping of your block transfers.

You can only transfer a few paramters on your rack connection. If you are using a lot of parameters from each drive you will need to setup a message instruction for each additional parameter.

You will need your drive of choice and a 20-COMM-RIO card in each drive.

There are two ways to approach this:

1. Re-use the externally-mounted SCANPort/RIO modules (1203-GD1) with PowerFlex 70 drives. There is a good Knowledgebase document about this, Answer ID # 43077 (Access Level: Everyone). This requires a minimum of alteration to the hardware and the PLC program (speed scaling only).

2. Convert to 20-COMM-R communication modules and use PowerFlex 70, 70EC, 700VC or 750-series drives. This requires more extensive changes to the PLC program. There is a good Knowledgebase document about this approach as well, Answer ID # 21565 (Access Level: Everyone).

Your choice will depend on the availability of PowerFlex 70 or 70EC drives in your power and performance range, and your appetite for PLC program changes.