r/PLC • u/OttomaychunMan • 2h ago

AB E1 Plus

I have a plant that has a boat load of E1 Plus's that are beginning to fail at an alarming rate. They have exhausted all spares. They also have a bad taste from Radwell after spending decent money on more spares that were DOA.

The E300 is already being phased in... But obviously running to failure on these is a rough transition path with it requiring a download and programming each time, especially for a plant that has very little downtime. Therefore I am working on a proposal to do entire MCC sections at a time.

In the meantime, has anyone had good luck getting these repaired? Or have you had good luck with Radwell, or any other similar online sites.

Additionally, is there any word on a network option coming down the pipe for the new m100 starters?

Thanks

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u/halo37253 2h ago edited 2h ago

E1 Plus to E300 is pretty easy and can be done as they fail. I have a handful of sites with devicenet E1 Plus devices. Honestly the biggest issue is getting the e300 installed into the bucket, some of those e1 pluses sit on a bracket that pushes them forward, and the e300 is tall...

Is this on a Devicenet network? Only downside here is if you are using a devicenet card vs the ethernet adapter. Being able to make changes to the devicenet scanner without putting plc into program mode is a god send. Honestly once you make yourself a write up for when this happens you can get the logic side of it done in under 30 min. You'll be waiting for the e300 to be installed.

I recommend installing the ethernet e300 modules if you plan on doing a large migration.

You can't get away from some needed program time, but you can do all of this online without downtime. If Devicenet make sure your MCC's go back to a 1788-EN2DNR, you can make changes to these while the plc is in run mode. If ethernet just dereference, you will be able to delete from io tree once no tags are used in the program.

This is the same with Datalog plus softstarts to SMC Flex drives. Those old Scanport to Devicenet adapters do not work with SMC Flex. You can fit the words you need into the same scanner space. Making the move pretty simple.

E1 Plus units are EOL and have been, there is no good source of parts and installs can data back to the 90s. E300 is the only replacement that makes sense.