DeviceNet issues with Vacon drives

[Conor 4]

Hi, I have a DeviceNet network that has Vacon drives and compact blocks on it. The Vacon drives are a mixture of NX and CX types. The compact blocks are 8 in/8 out (1791D-8B8P). The DeviceNet scanner card in on an SLC5/04 rack. When I go online to the DeviceNet and to a Network upload the Vacon drives stop communicating to the Scanner card, i.e. I loose comm's and get "78" errors on the scanner card. On the Vacon drive the error "Field Bus communication error". I have to power down the drive to re-establish comm's. Has anyone encountered this kind of error, or could someone point me in the right direction. Thanks, Conor

[BobLfoot 301]

Does error 78 show up if you plug your PC into the network but don't do anything or does it wsit to occur when you start uploading? Note 78 means the scanner could not establish a connection to the device.

[Conor 4]

HI Bob, When I plug in to the scanner card everything is fine. As soon as I do a network upload the Devices loose comm's, i.e. 78 error. I have a lot of DeviceNet on-site, but this is the only one that causes me problems. I have downloaded and registered the latest EDS files from the Vacon website.

[BobLfoot 301]

Conor I have no experience with Vacom drives, but I did get to attend ODVA's 3 day DeviceNet School for Equipment Builders back in 1994. What node number is your PC Adapter, your SLC Scanner and one of your problem drives? I can think of a case where if the PC is node 1 and the Scanner is node 2 this would disrupt scanner to drive comms possibly. Your PC needs to be a higher node number than any drive or the SLC Scanner for best problem avoidance. If by luck this turns out to be your case and changing the PC node number fixes the issue I'll explain the technical why later if you're interested.

[Conor 4]

Hi Bob, The scanner card is node 0. I am using a PCI card will check number later, but it is in as node 58. On that particular network the Compact blocks are node 1 to 20, and from 21 to 35 Vacon drives. This problem happened me on Wednesday. I was replacing a Vacon CX drive (older type) for a Vacon NX drive(new type drive). I uploaded from the network, got comm's errors. Cleared these errors. Then I needed to download to the scanner card as the new drive was the newer version. Anyway, when I download to the scanner card I get the comm's errors again. Also Bob, I am very interested in anything you can let me know about DeviceNet. All of the older plant in our factory is DeviceNet controlled, and is mostly stable. Thanks again, Conor.

[Giz99 0]

Did you see if there was a new .eds file for the drive and install it?

[Conor 4]

I checked the Vacon website and downloaded and installed the lastest eds files for the drives.