Trying to integrate AB PLC5's communicating under ControlNet with Seimens PLC's under Profibus. Two or more PLC5's must have communication with one or more Siemens PLC's under Profibus. Have already looked at installing Ethernet on Existing PLC5's, but would like a way to use existing ControlNet Platform to communicate to Profibus.

Under present conditions, a single PLC5 on ControlNet is communicating with a maximum of two other PLC5's (one before and one after). Eventually, two PLC5's from the ControlNet network, must exchange data with at least Siemens PLC under Profibus.

Is there some form of ControlNet hub out there that along with a ControlNet to Profibus Gateway/Bridge can accomplish this. Any other suggestion would be appreciated.

Thank you,

 

One simple way would be to use the FlexLogix PLC with a Controlnet card and a Profibus Card, the Profibus card is made by http://www.hilscher.com

 

Maybe you could have a look to SST stuff at http://www.mysst.com

We had good results in interfacing SLC-5/04 to Profibus DP. They also have a backplane
card for PLC-5 being a Master/Slave to Profibus Network, and Network1 to Network2
bridges. I didn't try those though...

Good Luck,
Pascal

 

http://www.mysst.com/pub/drivers/pfbplc5/plc5man.pdf

The above card must sit on the right side of the PLC5 CPU connected to it thorugh the side-car conector. It supports both DP master and slave. So does the S7. If you need several PLC5s talking to several S7, maybe the best thing is to use DP-DP converters and configure both the S7 and the SST cards as masters.

There is another SST solution which may be more suitable if the amount of data is large. The X-LINK gateway using 5136-CN-ISA can be a PCCC device talking to the PLC5s, and with the 5136-PBMS-ISA on the other ISA slot of the X-LINK, you have a multi-slave profibus card. Since Profibus is multi-master you can hookup several S7 masters and configure different virtual Profibus slaves with the X-link config software. The X-LINK provides a mapping tool to send data back and forth the Controlnet side and the Profibus side.

Rgds.

Alfredo