Suggestions Anyone?

[Mike Davidson 0]

I have an existing setup on a machine which invovles 2 CQM1H-CPU51 plc's with a Controller Link installed between the plc's. Each plc has an NT-31C attached to it and the controller link allows for some of the local I/O to be accessed by the remote screen. This was installed some years ago and has been very stable. The client is about to perform some serious upgrades and modifications to sections of the machine not presently controlled by the existing CQM1H plc's. Given the physical size of the attached machine I am looking at a remote I/O scheme (leaning towards CompoNet). I had envisioned setting up a CJ series PLC with a couple of CompoNet masters. In addition I would replace the NT-31C's with a pair of NS12's. My question is how should I set up the communication between the NS12's and the CJ plc if I wished to still have the serial link to the existing CQM1H's? I would say ethernet if I was dealing with A-B but am unfamiliar with Omron's ethernet modules. As a further wrinkle for consideration this is actually two machines which are capable of swapping some component's back and forth between them. It would might make more sense to have two CJ series plc's (one per machine) with a link to the individual NS12's and an additional link between the plc's that would allow for the swapping of the movable components.

[Ken K. 0]

Maybe you can try to use the Omron ethernet IP modules. These seem to work well communicating between CJ series PLC using datalinks. You should also use ethernet IP to communicate with the NS12s if you get the ethernet port on those units. I have three CJ2 PLCs with the built in ethernet IP port talking to each other (using the datalinks) and talking to NS10 HMIs through a network switch.

[Mike Davidson 0]

I Like the idea of going to ethernet for the primary comm's. My concern is servicing the existing CQM1H's with a serial link, will the NS series support simultaneous servicing of the ethernet link and the serial link?

[Michael Walsh 268]

Yes, the NS will have no problem having PLCs on Ethernet and still servicing the existing serial connections. The NS allows you to configure "Hosts". Each button, lamp, etc. references a host and then an address within that host. So, if you add PLCs on Ethernet, it is simply a matter of adding some hosts to the Ethernet side of things and then adding your screens. Good luck.

[Mike Davidson 0]

Thankyou for the info, looks like I have some reading to do