dunc

profinet to mitsubishi A-series?

8 posts in this topic

i have been dumped an unfinished project with no budget left and i have been tasked to find a way to connect a new Siemens PCS7 system with profinet to 2-3 existing A-series mitsubishi systems.

we have limited I/O availability on the mitsubishi side, so i dont think an old school direct multicore connection is going to be viable.

 

the A series is connected to a SCADA system, so an OPC is an option, but turning the SCADA PC off would then stop the new process.

 

what options can people suggest that isnt going to require buying discontinued parts off ebay?

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buy new non-discounted parts.

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as the 422 connection between the SCADA and existing A-series mitsubishi PLCs has the SCADA as the master, this means adding another slave into the system and converting the signals to profinet is still going to end up with me needing the SCADA on to control the data flow?
if i was to do that i may as well go with an OPC.

the Aseries mitsubishi hardware was discontinued a good 10+ years ago. you can get some input, output and power supply cards new still, but anything like comms cards and CPU's are getting hard/impossible to get new now.
the last time i had to get a few spares, our supplier had to go to a third party warrantied used spare supplier. i would like to stay away from going that route if possible.

 

i have attached a diagram of what i have and what i want to achieve: 

i was just wondering if there is any other options i have missed?

 

Drawing1.pdf

Edited by dunc

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Is the A PLC connected through CPU RS422 port or is there some other communication card for this connection w/ SCADA?

Depending on the communication, ETH1000 ICC gateway may be used.

 http://www.iccdesigns.com/millennium-series/10-eth-1000.html

Edited by Thiago Turcato

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On 1/9/2020 at 2:17 PM, dunc said:

i have been dumped an unfinished project with no budget left and i have been tasked to find a way to connect a new Siemens PCS7 system with profinet to 2-3 existing A-series mitsubishi systems.

we have limited I/O availability on the mitsubishi side, so i dont think an old school direct multicore connection is going to be viable.

 

the A series is connected to a SCADA system, so an OPC is an option, but turning the SCADA PC off would then stop the new process.

 

what options can people suggest that isnt going to require buying discontinued parts off ebay?

Hi Dunc.

In terms of hardware- you have a few options (again, I know this hardware is obsolete but is readily available cheap and reliable).

The A-Series does support Profibus-DP via the A1SJ71PB92D module, this allows cyclic communication as a slave or master (Profimap or DP Configurator is needed if you plan on running as a master).

On the Siemens side- you could simply use another 300 CPU (for example S7-317 2PN/DP). This way you can convert Profibus DP to Profinet IO

Please be aware the A-Series Hardware only support a tranfer rate of 32BYTES, however in Mode E you can get another 32BYTES (so 64BYTES in total).

If you want further help in setting this up or picking the hardware, feel free to let me know, maybe provide more information on the amount and types of data you want to transmit.

 

A Series 1 (Profibus) <---------> (Profibus) S7-300 CPU (Profinet) <----------> (Profinet) PCS7 System

A Series 2 (Profibus)

A Series 3 (Profibus)

 

Regards

Daniel.

 

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first you need to get the closer look at each PLC and determine what options are available. Does your S7 PLC have ProfiBus port too or only ProfiNet?

If it does support ProfiBus, A1SJ71PB92D is a good option. But note that hardware alone may not be enough, as i recall there is a separate (paid) option called ProfiBusDP configurator or something like that. This may be something to check since you are on a budget. 

 

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thanks for the feedback.

the PCS7 system is supplied via an OEM, so info is minimal at the moment. i haven't yet been allowed to see any of the hardware to see what is what. we could probably add profibus to the Siemens system, but again, the  A1SJ71PB92D Mitsubishi card is discontinued so wouldn't want to go that route.

the existing communication to the SCADA from the Mitsubishi PLC is via a separate card (A1SJ71C24-R4). there is another separate card which talks directly to an HMI. if we want to do any maintenance on that PLC we can connect using an Sc-09 cable directly into the CPU.

as the 422 cards on the PLC are a slave, turning off the HMI or SCADA would yield the same issue as using the existing SCADA and an OPC connection.
i appreciate i could get fancy with the 422 protocol and run multi master, but i feel that is a bit specialist and outside my skillset in the short timescale we have to get the project live.

 

OPC is looking like the best option at present, but if anyone else has anything that springs to mind, then fire away!

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