ECAT Network Stability

[warrenlee]

Hello All,

 

We recently experience occurrences that some of the slaves on the Ecat network go to safe-op randomly. This pattern is observed frequently when PMAC IDE is busy, such as, Open Tuning Windows, save the project etc.

 

Our ECAT master is CK3MCPU121, with clock setting to 8KHZ phase clock, 4khz servo and 4khz rt. Master Shift. We have 6 ethercat drives with 3 drives set to CST mode, rest are in CSP, and we have NX-ECC203 as first device in the chain. There are 2 CK3WAX axial interface connected to the master too.

 

Additionally, we are using Omron 1SN 15T drive, and we quite often see B200 Errors with indicating an Ecat communication sync loss warning.

 

I am wondering what are the parameters on the master I should look into in this case for troubleshooting. Also, what does this ECAT[x].SyncLimit do as they are not included in the manual.

 

Thanks a lot in advance for any help

 

Warren

[Omron Forums Support]

If you place ECAT[0].DCClockDiff in the watch window while EtherCAT is running, how does it behave? Does it stay near a constant value or keep increase/decreasing forever?

[Omron Forums Support]

Are you using safety in this system? If so, it may work better with an EtherCAT rate of 2 kHz instead of 4 kHz. If you are not using safety, try to “Clear all coupler memory” on the coupler.

[dougjr17]

Same issue here IDE version 4.5.1.3 -- we narrowed it down to Sync 0 clock signal being missed or delayed past max threshold whenever the PowerPMAC IDE is closed while Ethercat master is enabled, activated and operational. Single AKD slave here running at 4KhZ in torque mode with 2 vars per tx/rx PDOs so not very busy and the timeouts have always been when PowerPMAC IDE crashes or is being closed. CK3M with 1 W module in this case as well.

[hjpark]

Hello,

 

I have also experienced a situation where the EtherCAT connection is sometimes terminated when 'Power PMAC IDE' is closed.

 

I don't know the cause.

 

I hope you find the cause.

 

Thanks

[Omron Forums Support]

This attachment shows how to set up the ECAT network at the higher rate, but slow it down to 2 kHz for the NX-ECC203. I hope it helps.

TaskID1Ext_Function.pdf

[warrenlee]

Thanks for everyone help. I will give those a try and keep you posted.