Spaceferret

Ethercat, Smartwire dt, or Other

6 posts in this topic

Long time lurker yada yada.

So I design, program, and integrate controls. My recent project has left a bad taste in my mouth about letting electricians run control wiring. The cost was over 120k for their part in it and I ended up having to terminate at all field spots and cabinet. Enough of my whining. My question to the community is what experience have you had with Ethercat, Smartwire, or another field wiring topology that reduces the time for installs? 

I'm looking to design the entire layout and just have local electricians only land power. Reducing costs for customers and speed up installs. Plus dang my control cabinet builds would get a hell of a lot simpler.

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As for field wiring i like CC-Link IE Field maybe not as popular as most but you can use star and line topology together as much as you like so you don't really need to take care. It's 1GBps uses standard CAT cables and you don't need switches.

Edited by Gambit
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We use alot of Smart-wire products, typically in every new cabinet build. The time savings and cost of material in control wiring is amazing, if you have EATON software and all compatable devices. If you do not it can be a pain in the ***, and the system has a pretty high learning/troubleshooting curve. Where are you based out of?

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I'm out of North Carolina near Greensboro. I was thinking of going Smartwire route.

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Im not sure who you have as far as electrical suppliers, we use Wille Electric here in Central California. Availibility might be an issue for you, you will need the crimp tools, free software (CodeSys, SWD Assist). I can put you in touch with someone from EATON.

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Use EtherCAT on an almost daily basis.  Good and fast, wiring is very free form.  Every slave device has 2 ports so you can wire node to node, but there are also junction slaves which can create tap and drop or star topologies.  And of course its standard CAT5 Ethernet cables and RJ45 plugs, so simple to install and terminate.

Troubleshooting is very simple too.

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