Connect 2 Master PLC

lfbaillargeon

Hi,
I'm working on a project where there is PLC1 connected to IRC5 controller managing commands and system IOs and also PLC2 acting as an programmable remote IO on the robot's tool. A standard remote IO wasn't picked as we wanted to manage a step motor from the device and needed additionnal functionnality such as position PID... PLC1 is NX102 and PLC2 is NX1P2 both from Omron.

First of all, we have set up the communication putting the EDS file of the robot in both PLCs. We then noticed that this doesn't work as 2 devices write at the same place.

So then, is it possible to obtain 2 distinct memory area in the robot to admit 2 or more Masters? I am not very familiar with all the EDS parameters but it seems to me that the fact that there is only 1 type of IO assembly (100 for ins adn 112 for outs if I remember well) doesn't let us do much about having multiple devices writting to the robot. However, we've been informed from Omron tech support that this has been done in the past. Any idea?

PS: Ideally, I want to make PLC2 a slave to IRC5 (which is usually the case for a remote IO), but it seems to me that these new PLC are all tag based and the robot controller isn't able to transfer data to Ethernet/IP in a tag based manner. Still running some tests. I will let know if something good happens  

lfbaillargeon

Update: Since we are short in time, we integrated PLC1 as master of the robot and PLC2 which now means all tool robot IOs have to go through it before going to the tool remote IO itself... This is a solution that I really don't like is very easy to integrate.

It would still be really nice to know how to integrate a PLC as an adapter of an ABB robot for future integration and even maybe re-modifying the current project we are working on.