Upgrade 1395 DC drives - remote I/O

[Guest technogumbo]

We have 50-60 Allen-Bradley 1395 DC drives in-use and little spare parts on-hand. A-B holds very little 1395 drives in-stock, thus they are pretty much built to order (10-12 week lead time). To minimize unplanned downtime, an option we are looking at is replacing the 1395 drives a few a time to build up our spare part stock pile. However, with most of the drives talking Remote I/O to Allen-Bradley PLCs (mostly PLC-5, but some SLC-500 PLCs), I have found no alternatives without adding network bridges or interface cards. Thus, who has delt with upgrading Remote I/O devices, such as motor drives?

[Ken Roach 194]

Are you looking for equivalent models of DC drives to replace the 1395's with, or are you planning on changing out to high-torque AC drives, or what ? A-B's RIO protocol was expensive to license, so few vendors did. Those that reverse-engineered it, like Toshiba, had lousy results. I would look for DeviceNet interfaces for the drives, so that you can integrate them almost as easily with PLC/SLC controllers as the RIO-based ones.

[bjclem 0]

Rockwell has asset management which stores parts at your location call your local rep , because the 1395 is a good system drive.

[Guest Moses]

If you looking for 1395 upgrading, base on my experience, we replace 1395 with reliance flexpax 3000 and using device net protocol. If you are using PLC-5 or SLC, you only need to add device net scnanner. Flexpak 3000 is easier on setup and maintenance. You can choose powerflex power module, this will reduce significant upgrade cost. Moses