Motion Control and Motor Drives

[TheWisk]

Hello,

I currently am beginning a project where I'll be working with an old machine that has an Allen Bradley MicroLogix 1500 PLC that functions to control some motors on the machine.  I want to interface with this PLC and get it to do some simple motor control for me using Labview. 

What is the easiest way to do this?  What is the cheapest way to do this ( I assume this is different than the easiest way) ?

PS. I looked on the 'idnet' portion of the NI website and could not find any 'Allen Bradley' or 'Rockwell Automation' drivers available.  I probably searched incorrectly because I find it very surprising that there are zero Allen Bradley product drivers listed as I was trying to search.  So is there any labview driver for interfacing with an Allen Bradley Micrologix 1500 PLC available?

PPS. I couldnt attach the AB manual cuz its too big for the filesize limit sorry.

Thanks!

[Jeff-P]

Hi,

I think your best bet is to use OPC servers to communicate. I found some references to a driver for the MicroLogix 1500 but I couldn't find the specific driver so I am looking into it some more. In the meantime, take a look at this document which talks about using Allen Bradley PLCs with NI-OPC Servers: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/E8075B687AF86D7B8625756F008037EC

Regards,