Able to use Ultra3000 drive with SLC500?

[PLCguy12]

Is it possible to use an SLC 5/04 to control an AB Ultra3000 Sercos drive?

From what I understand, there are not any Sercos cards for the SLC line of PLCs, but is it still possible to control the drive using one of the serial ports(CN3, CN2 or CN1)?

Thanks

 

[kolyur]

SLCs cannot do Sercos. Without sercos your options are:

1. Trigger fixed motion profiles programmed into Ultra using discrete I/O.
2. Get the Devicenet version of the drive and access the parameters with the 1747-SDN scanner.
3. Use the CN3 comm port to control the parameters with ASCII commands from your SLC's serial port (difficult because you'd have to write all the logic to do the ASCII parsing). I've had good luck using the Red Lion G3 because it has a driver for the Ultra and does all the work for you. And it will communicate with your SLC as well.

Note that none of these options provide real-time control like sercos does.

 

[lendyck]

Maybe another alternative is to use the HSRV for single axis control. I think this is the closest to "integrated" motion the SLC will get!

 

[PLCguy12]

SLCs cannot do Sercos. Without sercos your options are:

1. Trigger fixed motion profiles programmed into Ultra using discrete I/O.
2. Get the Devicenet version of the drive and access the parameters with the 1747-SDN scanner.
3. Use the CN3 comm port to control the parameters with ASCII commands from your SLC's serial port (difficult because you'd have to write all the logic to do the ASCII parsing). I've had good luck using the Red Lion G3 because it has a driver for the Ultra and does all the work for you. And it will communicate with your SLC as well.

Note that none of these options provide real-time control like sercos does.

Thanks for the response. I don't really need real time control, I just need to index a pair of small wheels (moving independently of eachother) to different positions every 5 seconds or so.

"1. Trigger fixed motion profiles programmed into Ultra using discrete I/O."

I've looked through the manuals and I'm having a hard time locating the section that describes how to do this.

 

[kolyur]

If your application is fairly simple then you can probably just trigger pre-programmed motion profiles with PLC I/O. Make sure you have the Ultraware software and serial cable to connect to the CN3 port from your PC. Also, verify that the Ultra drive is the indexing version (the part number will have an "X" suffix, i.e. 2098-DSD-010X). The non-indexing version is pretty much worthless unless you're using Sercos and/or have an external motion controller.

Basically, you'll use Ultraware to configure the drive, adjust the tuning parameters for the motor and connected load, then set up motion profiles with distance, velocity, acceleration, etc. You can configure the digital inputs of the drive so that the motion profiles can be triggered from your PLC.

I'd suggest taking a look at the Ultraware user manual:
http://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/um/2098-um001_-en-p.pdf

 

[alan_505]

I am pretty sure that the Sercos drives become indexing drives when you turn off the Sercos.

Alan