Daisy chaining 525's

trespassingby

Member
Join Date
Aug 2018
Location
Houston
Posts
3
Hello,

Trying to figure out if I can daisy chain powerflex 525's without using RS-485 cables and just using cat5 to the ethernet ports.

Each drive has its own IP address, furthermore all the drives are being recognized in RSlinx but aren't able to connect except for the main drive connected to the switch. The drives that are daisy chained after the main have an X through them.

After reading a lot of the threads my post probably sticks out like a sore thumb due to my inexperience -_-.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Welcome to the PLCTalk forum community !

The standard PowerFlex 525 drive has two similar-looking modular jacks side-by-side. The one on the left is Ethernet (EtherNet/IP protocol), and the one on the right is RS-485 (the Drive Serial Interface protocol).

There's also a dual-port EtherNet/IP option module available, which lets you create a fault-tolerant Device-Level Ring (DLR) arrangement with Ethernet ports.

With the standard built-in port, users typically wire each drive back to an Ethernet switch.

There's also an option for "Multi-Drive Mode" in which up to 5 drives operate as a single Ethernet node, and the "slave" drives are daisy-chained over RS485 wiring. There's a good writeup about it in the PowerFlex 525 User Manual.
 
Understood.

Yep, currently we are looking to free up some ports on the switch hence the daisy chaining.

Regarding the "slave" drives, would they all have the same IPs?

Will look into manual again, I saw the multidrive section but was thinking if there was a way to configure the serial port to a ethernet/IP port.
 
I would recommend buying a bigger switch and not going DSI. Dog **** Interface works most of the time, but troubleshooting it is a nightmare plus there are serious latency issues.
 
I'll chime in that I did a daisy a long time ago, the downside is if any of the drives have an issue the rest down stream go down as well.

I remember the setup being fairly easy but personally I wouldn't do it again.
 
As Ken mentioned, DLR route is the way to go. I updated a panel a few years ago where the drives were all devicenet w/limited space for a large switch. DLR Worked great with the pf525s.
 
As Ken mentioned, DLR route is the way to go. I updated a panel a few years ago where the drives were all devicenet w/limited space for a large switch. DLR Worked great with the pf525s.

Yeah, that's pretty much the truth of it. I remember reading on the subject in some of the top 10 comparisons on besttechexpert.guide and all the info agrees that daisy chaining is not the way to go here.

And you know, even if the chassis is already built, that doesn't do much if it doesn't work.
 
Adding a 25-COMM-E2P to each drive and doing a DLR or linear ethernet network is defiantly the way to go if you do not want to install a larger switch. I always went for a larger switch though, because at a list of $386 per drive, it can become quite expensive quickly as the number of drives increase.
 
I would recommend buying a bigger switch and not going DSI. Dog **** Interface works most of the time, but troubleshooting it is a nightmare plus there are serious latency issues.
Or you could put a small unmanaged switch at each drive. You could then daisy-chain the Ethernet through the switches. You can find small industrial switches for less than $100 that will do the job. It would also give you the ability to tap into the system from any of the drive locations and see all of the other drives (and what they are connected to)
 

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