Wago 750 & Beckhoff KL series - interchangeablity?

We have have a large amount of Wago 750 series installed in our factory, and shortly we'll be receiving a new machine that uses the Beckhoff KL series. I believe Beckhoff and Wago jointly developed the physical product then wrote their own firmware, but is there any interchangeability between the 2 product lines, particularly in the digital IO modules?
Would really like to avoid having to stock 2 lines of spares, partly for economics, but also to avoid using the wrong part during a breakdown.

Hello ggc,

The system has been introduced in 1995 & is still used very widely. In the beginning, Beckhoff made the electronics and Wago made the terminal housings. By now, the development is really split and both make there own electronics so my expectation is that the modules will no longer work together.

For analog modules I'm very sure, for digital modules... You could test that easily please post you results!

Hello GGC,

Attached excel sheet with the conversions, its in dutch but you can figure it out.

Ed

Converted it to English the best I could...

View attachment Wago-Beckhoff conversion list.xls

ed thank you for the list.
The newer units are not compatible, as the communication bus is changed by beckhoff. So you will need to stock both, or ask supplier to use WAGO, as most of the modules are available. (NOT all)
WAGO has ships approval on all modules and beckhoff does not have this.
The software is also different, however with the export function it may be possible to convert from beckhoff to WAGO.

My understanding is that Beckhoff and Wago jointly developed the K-bus system, which Beckhoff now terms "Bus Terminal". About the time that Beckhoff began selling EtherCAT (E-bus), Wago decided to go on their own by marketing the K-bus as "Wago-I/O" (ca 1994). It appears that Wago developed additional modules since. One would probably need the "device description" files (ESD, I recall) to recognize them in TwinCAT. The main reason to use K-bus in a new Beckhoff design is that they draw much less power and there are a few modules that aren't available in E-bus (we use KL2692 Watchdog Timer). Some might be less expensive in K-bus. Think of K-bus as similar to RS-485 performance. I measured K-bus speed ~1 ms for digital I/O and 4-6 ms for analog in to digital out response. We need <1 ms response so use E-bus. I am sure many have made the mistake of clipping K-bus modules directly to E-bus, but that won't work. There are several couplers to use K-bus modules in an E-bus system, but they will still update at their lower rate.

I understand that Wago still makes the plastic housings for Beckhoff. When the Wago-I/O demo trailer visited our site, I asked them about their Beckhoff relation. The guy bragged that they could shut Beckhoff down at any time. But, seems laughable since w/ ~$1B annual sales, Beckhoff could procure plastic another way. It is probably still a mutually beneficial relationship.

Please let us know if TwinCAT recognizes the Wago modules. I don't have any Wago modules to try.