X20IF10E1 Profinet Master communication between KUKA Robots

X20IF10E1 module should be configured as seen below. The latest X20IF10E version is 1.4.0.0 on the date the page was created. Latest version of interface card is recommended for proper profinet communication.

GSD file can be imported with 3rd-Party Device Manager of B&R.
In following path; Tools → 3rd-Party Device Manager → Import DTM Device(s)
Using latest version of KUKA’s .gsd file is recommended.

Latest version of the module can be found HERE!

Firstly, user needs to reach profinet configuration by clicking device configuration of profinet interface which specified under X20IF10E module.

image

After reaching the configuration, you will be seen by the page located below.

In the controller network tab, name of station and IP parameters needs to be configured. IP address must be in same subnet mask that created on KUKA’s controller. IP address of KUKA controller can be found on PNIODriver module of KUKA’s program.

In device table tab robot(s) must be named as same as configured on KUKA’s side.

Also IP address table must be configured correctly.

In following example name is configured as “kuka-noname” in KUKA’s program;

After these are configured, station timing of profinet master must be matched bus cycle time of slave KUKA robots.
The I/O data of the devices are updated in the robot controller memory every 2 ms in our example.
If profinet does not match until bus timeout, BF led of X20IF10E1 will on that shows no link to remote station. Also blinking BF led shows that not all configured robot modules are connected.

More specification can be found in configuration of KUKA robots .gsd files. On system designer page of B&R Automation Studio .gsd file configuration can be reached by clicking device configuration. On the opened page, you will be able to see values you have been configured on profinet interface.

In configuration window of .gsd file (be aware, it is not device configuration), you should configured input and output image for your modules that stands on KUKA’s controller. This is used to transfer IO data between KUKA and B&R.


** This screen may differ according to the variety of modules.

• After all the steps are done in order, please rebuild and load program again.

• Note that the powerlink cycle time must be lower than the profinet cycle time. In our example, powerlink cycle was set lower than 2ms.

• If your PLC is not able to do that, you should increase the profinet cycle time for proper communication. Otherwise, you may get connection problems in your powerlink network.

• All IO mappings must be done. If you configured IO images and didn’t declare all of them profinet will be crashed by timeout. Because, in this case, IO’s of B&R profinet master and KUKA profinet slave does not match.

9 Likes

Hello Hakan,
Thank you for the article. I did communication between KUKA robot and B&R X20IF10E1.
Just information for other colleagues.
I had face issue with PNIO driver(Not healthy) at KUKA robot side. issues was with IO mapping slot.
Steps that i followed.

  1. Imported correct GSDML(Ex. KR_5.0, KR_4.1) file into AS and Configured same in KUKA robot.
  2. Configured No. of IOs in KUKA robot, in my case it is “8”.
  3. In AS i have imported GSDML file, and remove default configured IO.(By Default both solt were configured with Safe IO and 256 Digital IO). Following Image shows configuration.




Received Data is in USINT format which i process & Converted into Bit structure.

Note:-i think, we don’t required processing Data , if we configured as Input and Output image and set data type. so we can directly map our process variable (I haven’t tested it, but it should work)

Hi Vivek,

First of all, thank you for reaching out to me about the problem you are experiencing and informing the B&R Community about the solution.

As I mentioned in our internal conversation on MS Teams, as long as you communicate bytewise, you can map directly without the need for such a BYTE_TO_BOOL operation.