KUKA KRC4 to PLC communication using EthernetIP to Profinet Anybus X-Gateway

Hello,

I wondered if anyone in this forum has any experience of using the HMS Anybus X-Gateway EthernetIP / Profinet device to communicate between a KUKA KRC4 controller and a Siemens S7-1214 PLC: the controller is to connect to the EthernetIP side of the gateway and the PLC connects to the Profinet side. I am actually a PLC programmer and our company is providing support to a customer who builds and programs robot cells using KUKA robots, so I had not seen the KRC4 controller or WorkVisual software before this week. Until the comms are established however, I can't start the PLC side of things. I am working with a guy who is familiar with older KUKA controllers but he has not worked with WorkVisual before. Any hints we can get therefore will be very much appreciated...

The PLC side of the gateway (Profinet) is fine: all configured and the PLC can connect to the gateway and write data, but the EthernetIP side of the gateway shows no connection to the KUKA controller. In the WorkVisual project, an Ethernet/IP bus has been added to the bus structure and the communications settings set as follows (see also attached screenshot 'ethernetip.png'):

IP source address (WorkVisual PC network card) = 169.254.25.50
Subnet mask = 255.255.0.0
Begin detection range address = 169.254.25.1
End detection range address = 169.254.25.254
Adapter bus timeout = 20000
Scanner IP address (address configured on virtual5 interface of robot via the robot HMI) = 169.254.25.101
Scanner bus timeout = 20000

The gateway has been added to the Ethernet/IP bus after first adding the correct EDS file for the device. The EthernetIP side of the device is set with IP address 169.254.25.100, subnet 255.255.0.0 and the address setting in WorkVisual is shown in the attached screenshot 'anybus.png'. The device is also enabled. The gateway is currently set up on both systems (Siemens TIA Portal and WorkVisual) at the moment with 16 input bytes and 16 output bytes. This was set up before I began work on the system.

All IP addresses above are as per the customer specifications, not ones that I have chosen. When the settings are applied and we try to connect to the bus, we get a message saying 'No device found at the specified address. All online functions will be deactivated.' (attached screenshot 'nodevice.png'). We can ping the EthernetIP side of the gateway so the address entered into the WorkVisual project for it matches the device.

I have contacted KUKA technical support in the UK but the contact I was speaking to said that he was "not up to speed on interfacing with the robot." I am sure that there is probably something that I have missed whilst trying to set everything up, but if there is anyone who has used the Anybus X-Gateway on EthernetIP with the KUKA controllers before and has some advice, it would really help. I will post any more settings details that you wish if you let me know which.

Thanks.

Rich.

Hi Panic Mode

EIP is installed and I think it is running but how can I confirm?

I did not configure the KLI but this is configured as far as I know. Again, I would need to confirm this with the guys who began the work on the controller project.

I/O mapping for EIP is NOT yet done. This may be the problem we have: we did not realise the driver would not run without any I/O mapped. We will try this first.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Rich.

An update to this issue:

We talked further with Kuka and their application specialist as we could not get the Anybus gateway to work and decided in the end to advise the customer to switch to use the Profinet protocol. With this we were able to quickly establish communications and this is now the solution that we will be going with.

Rich.

The Kuka tech support engineer actually talked us through the process over the phone and used a TeamViewer session to show us.