Power Flex 4 Drives

[mracer 2]

I have some fan control panels that have 4 Power Flex drives in each of them. My question is this. Is there a way to like all 4 to one com line so I can walk up to them and plug in and see all 4? I know the 40 and 70 are build more for networking. This is more of a convenience thing. Thanks. Racer

[BobLfoot 302]

I am not at work right now, but I recall that I have a cable to connect my PF4's to my 1203-sss for PC programming and that would mean you could connect 1203-gd1 for RIo at least.

[bguinn 0]

I know the PF4 has an RS485 port, and they can be networked for control. I think, they should be able to be networked, and programmed if on the 485 using Drive Executive. I have never tried this though. I have used a 22COMMD and another box AB has to make a devicenet to 485 gateway, they send and received status and commands. Edited 29 Oct 2007 by bguinn

[mracer 2]

I am using Drive Exec. and the adapter/modem from AB to set up there drives. I'm just getting started with Drive Exec. but have been using the drives for some time. Just never set them up with the lap top. I have a bunch of Reliance MD 60 drives as well but that takes some other software looks like the same drive just in a different case. The software will connect but it tells me it don't support this device. Thanks for the input racer

[Ken Roach 194]

The PF4 drives only support the "Drive Serial Interface" (DSI), which is a superset of Modbus RTU on RS485 wiring. The 22-COMM-232SCM adapter is generally just used to connect to a single drive. You can definitely daisy-chain drives, as described in Appendix C of the PowerFlex 4 User Manual. But I have never seen the 22-COMM-232SCM connected to a network of PF4 or PF40 drives using a daisy-chain. This kind of feature is done with PF7-class drives via DPI and CNet/DNet/ENet. You can plug into one drive's auxilary DPI port and bridge across the network to the other drives. Take a look at the wiring in Appendix C of the PF4 User Manual, and ask A-B if you can adapt that to put a 22-COMM-232SCM at the head-end of the network.