EtherCAT: Module Installation and Network Setup - LS Electric XGB PLC from AutomationDirect

the XM CPU has several options for add-on communication modules some are for normal TCP Network traffic but the xbf PN cards are an option for a simplified ethercat network ethercat is an industrial ethernet protocol designed specifically for the needs of Industrial Automation it offers many advantages over traditional TCP based networks such as dedicated nodes submillisecond packing intervals as well as deterministic time clock synchronization which allows high performance multiaxis integrated motion the XM CPU can support up to two ethercat modules we can either go with two xbf PN 04 BS with four axes of motion per module or two xbf pn0 8 BS with 8 axes per module we could also use one of each it is important to note that while the CPU can support more than one card all integrated multi-axis motion must occur within a card no coordination is possible between one xpf PN card and another nor is it Poss to have coordination with any of the plc's on board step and Direction axes the cards also must be physically installed right next to the CPU since we are using only one module it will be installed into slot two which is the first physical position to the right of the CPU slot zero is the CPU itself and Slot one is the onboard XM motion controller if we had two modules they would need to be in slots two and three the ethercat network modules cannot be in any other slots and no more than two may be connected Ed to the XM CPU for the physical Network the ethercat protocol supports numerous architectures however the xgb PLC can only be deployed in a linear ethercat Network in our example we will be connecting three ix7 series ethercat drives up to an xgb ether cap positioning module we will connect an Ethernet cable from the positioning module to the in Port of the first drive in line we will then go from the outport on the first drive to the second drive's inport and then again from the outport to the third dries inport this completes our ethercat Network unlike serial communication systems there is no need for any type of Hardware termination at the end of the line for identification on the network ethercat does not use IP or Mac addressing instead there is a single Master on the network and it is connected to multiple slaves each slave has its own unique Noe number most slave devices will have a way to select what the note address will be in the case of the ix7 drive there are two small rotary switches used to select a node number it can be anything from 0 to 97 98 and 99 are reserved for using the ix7 as a modbus TCP controlled Servo if you set the switch to zero it will allow the node address to be assigned by the master we could leave all three drives in our Network set to zero and they will automatically be assigned to node one for the first drive node two for the second and node three for the third based on their connection or order xbf PN 04b supports node numbers 1- 4 and xbf PN 08b supports node numbers 1 through 8 this allows the network to be a little easier to set up however it is important to note that it also would be easy to reconnect the drives in the wrong order this could lead to commands being sent to the wrong physical axis from the controller as the node is how the master identifies each axis with the switches at zero the node address follows the ethernet cable connection order only in many motion apption sending motion commands to the wrong axis can be very dangerous to Personnel or Machinery so please be cautious when leaving the switches at zero now we have our ether cap Master physically connected to each of our three nodes and are ready to configure an ether cap project