Tackdriver said:
...I have been informed that the Remote IO will not be supported anymore in a year give or take...
Bit_Bucket_07 is correct, the end is not nigh!
Q: "
How long will the SLC Family of processors be sold and supported?"
Paul Kohntopp said:
We are committed to selling & supporting SLCs into the next decade!
Rockwell Automation appreciates your investment in the Allen-Bradley SLC 500, and we will continue to protect that investment. We offer a complete range of SLC 500 products for sale to service a wide variety of applications. And we continue to invest in the SLC 500 architecture. Our most recent additions include an Enhanced 5/05 CPU with 10/100 Mbps, increase connections, and embedded web server capability. Other additions include DF1 Radio Modem Compatibility for SLC 5/03, 5/04 and 5/05, the 1747-DPS1 Port Splitter, and the 1747-UIC Universal Serial Port (USB) to Data Highway-485 Interface Converter.
We plan to actively market and manufacture the SLC 500 product line well into the next decade. This line will continue to service those small to mid-range PLC applications where high performance and a wide variety of communication networks and I/O structures are important.
Allen-Bradley plans to continue to offer hardware/firmware upgrades and repair of SLC 500 Family products. Protecting our customers’ investment is a significant reason we have an installed base over 1.6 million CPU and over 12 million 1746 I/O installations world-wide. Furthermore, it is our practice to support products for seven years from the date they are removed from general sale, pending availability of components.
To give you some idea of our commitment to our customers, the 1772 Series PLC-2 family, which was introduced in 1979, was removed from sale in 2002. That is a product life in excess of twenty years. While we cannot predict component availability and market forces for the SLC 500 that would allow us to do the same, we are committed to the sale and support of the SLC 500 family for the foreseeable future.
I hope that this brief correspondence will give you some idea of Allen-Bradley’s commitment to providing a quality automation product and commitment to the SLC 500 product line.
Best regards,
Paul Kohntopp
Control Platforms (SLC/PLC) Business Manager
Automation Control and Information Group
Rockwell Automation / Allen-Bradley
If you have a lot of SLC chassis and want to migrate to a ControlLogix platform at some point in the future, I would suggest, space allowing, that you hold onto the chassis as Remote I/O racks. Then use the aforementioned 1747-AENTR to connect the SLC I/O to your Logix processors via 1756-EN2TR, or similar, through the Logix backplane. The cost of the 1747-AENTR would, or should, out-weight the cost of rewiring your SLC I/O over to Logix I/O modules, not to mention the time saved.
As mentioned, the 1747-AENTR replaces the SLC controller in slot 0 of each rack; converting them to Remote I/O chassis only.
In a typical setup, the 1747-AENTR is configured as a child adapter module to the 1756-EN2TR. It acts as a CIP gateway server between the SLC backplane and Ethernet/IP. You must connect to the 1747-AENTR via an Ethernet/IP router (1756-ENxTx) in the Logix backplane, and not the Logix controllers embedded Ethernet port. This then allows for Explicit messaging and control of the SLC chassis I/O, and the Remote Flex I/O connected to the SLC chassis.
This is typically what the 1747-AENTR is designed to do, and this particular migration method is fully supported by Rockwell.
If, of course, you have the time, money, and inclination, then by all means fully convert the SLC hardware over to Logix based platforms when you are good and ready, but I would hold fire on spending any money in the interim just to buy more SLC based hardware, purely in fear of lack of support/availablility, that will then become redundant to your needs when you do finally make the leap.
Regards,
George
