Description
Product Overview
1TGE120021R0010 is the MLink of ABB’s MNS iS intelligent motor control center: the single point at which an entire low-voltage switchboard becomes visible to a process control system. ABB’s own catalogue calls it a Communication Gateway; the MNS iS interface manual is more specific — an industrial PC fitted with the interface cards and ports needed for communication inward to the MControl devices and outward to the plant fieldbus.
Its position in the architecture explains its value. Inside the cubicle, MLink talks to the motor controllers over the switchgear bus, an RS-485 peer-to-peer link with a deterministic master-slave protocol; one MLink addresses up to 60 MControl devices, and beyond that a second gateway is required. Outward, it presents that population to a DCS, PLC or supervisory system as one standard fieldbus slave. Every current value, trip, alarm, event timestamp and start command for those sixty starters passes through this one box.
That concentration is also its risk profile. A failed 1TGE120021R0010 does not stop the motors — the drawers keep running with their local control — but the plant loses its window onto them. Operators lose current trending and pre-trip warnings, the DCS loses its commands, and maintenance loses the event log that says which feeder tripped first.
The part number carries a trap of its own. The MLink body is common across variants, but the fieldbus is selected at ordering, which is why the family spreads across suffixes and why 1TGE120021R0010 now has an official successor in 1TGE120021R0110. A gateway bought for PROFINET will not speak PROFIBUS because the cabinet needed it to.
Technical Specifications
表格
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Model | 1TGE120021R0010 |
| ABB product type | MLink |
| ABB catalogue description | Communication Gateway |
| ABB long description | MLink (Hardware Version 2, Fieldbus: Modbus RTU/TCP, PROFINET IO) |
| Product family | MNS iS intelligent motor control center |
| Internal communication | Switchgear bus, RS-485 peer-to-peer, deterministic master-slave protocol |
| Device capacity | Up to 60 MControl per MLink; additional MLink required beyond that |
| Internal connector | Switchgear bus connector (Sub-D 9) on the front, upper part of the unit |
| External Ethernet | LAN2, 10/100 Base-T, RJ45, CAT5 — switchgear control network |
| Software modules | Web server, OPC server (DA & AE), fieldbus, time synchronisation (NTP), redundant operation |
| Redundancy | Primary/backup pair, synchronised through port Serial 1 with automatic transfer |
| Dimensions (W × H × D) | 160 × 140 × 250 mm |
| Net weight | 2.974 kg |
| Replacement product ID | 1TGE120021R0110 |
| Conformity | CE, EC Declaration of Conformity MNS iS |
1TGE120021R0010
Key Features and Advantages
Sixty starters behind one slave address: the DCS does not need sixty device profiles, sixty addresses or sixty GSD entries — it polls one MLink and receives a mapped image of the whole motor group. On a plant with several hundred feeders, that is the difference between an integration project and a few gateways.
Protocol is fixed at ordering, so the suffix is the specification: the MLink family exists in PROFIBUS DP/DP-V1, Modbus RTU/TCP and PROFINET IO versions, and the fieldbus type “must be selected before ordering the MLink type” in ABB’s own words. Buying 1TGE120021R0010 as a cheap substitute for a PROFIBUS variant is a delivery that arrives correct-looking and useless.
Redundancy is built into the product, not bolted on: two MLinks are joined through the Serial 1 port for internal synchronisation, one configured Primary and one Backup, with automatic transfer when communication to the primary is lost. Web interfaces follow the primary, so the picture does not split after a switchover.
Software capability travels with the hardware: the same unit can carry a web server for MView or a browser, an OPC DA/AE server feed, NTP time distribution so that MControl alarms are stamped correctly, and the redundancy module. That is why replacing an 1TGE120021R0010 is a configuration exercise as much as a hardware swap.
The integration surface is deliberately ordinary: LAN2 is a standard 10/100 Base-T port on CAT5, and the fieldbus side is a standard slave interface, so the gateway connects to commercial switches and existing PLC masters rather than to ABB-only infrastructure.
Applications
Motor control centers in refineries and petrochemical plants use 1TGE120021R0010 to bring pump, fan and compressor starters into the DCS as a single PROFINET or Modbus node, which is where trip sequencing and pre-trip current trends actually matter.
Steel and cement plants with large MCC populations rely on the 60-device capacity per gateway to keep the feeder count addressable without multiplying masters, and on the event timestamps to reconstruct a line stop that cascaded across several drives.
Power plants and utilities apply the MLink where the MCC sits at the boundary between the electrical and process worlds: the switchgear keeps its own protection and interlocking, while the gateway supplies measurement and status upward without exposing the DCS to the low-voltage bus.
Water treatment, paper mills and data-center infrastructure use it for the same reason with a different emphasis — remote diagnosis, since a feeder that reports rising current through the gateway can be planned out of service instead of tripping at 3 a.m.
Plants running MNS iS with the optional Variable speed drive feeders (ABB ACS 850 drawers up to 55 kW withdrawable) also read drive status through the same MLink, so one interface covers both fixed-speed starters and drives.
Related Products
1TGE120021R0110 — the official replacement product ID for this MLink; the number to quote when ABB asks which version is current. 1TGE120011R1001 — MNS iS Control 70, the drawer-mounted motor controller and protection unit that the MLink concentrates. 1TGE120025R0101 — MView, the touch-screen HMI on the cubicle front panel, fed by the MLink over the switchgear control network. MControl — the protection and control device family behind the internal bus; up to 60 per MLink, and the reason for the capacity ceiling. MConnect — interface for integrating ABB T7, X1 and Emax circuit breakers with the correct trip units into the same MNS iS platform. MLink redundancy pair — a second MLink configured as Backup, synchronised via Serial 1, for installations where losing the gateway is not acceptable. MNavigate — the engineering and parameterisation tool that connects to MLink over Ethernet for configuration download and diagnostics. MNS iS System Guide (1TGC910001B0204) — the document that defines device mapping, which any replacement of 1TGE120021R0010 must be checked against.
Installation and Maintenance
Before installation: confirm the fieldbus variant of the replacement matches the cabinet — the PROFIBUS, Modbus and PROFINET versions of 1TGE120021R0010 share a body but not a protocol, and the new gateway must also carry a software image compatible with the installed system release. Record the existing parameter set through MNavigate before removal: device mapping, slave address, timeout behaviour and redundancy role all live in the gateway, and a blank unit will come up but will not be the unit you took out. Isolate the 24 V control supply, and note that the internal switchgear bus connector is the blue Sub-D 9 at the upper front of the device.
Maintenance practice: treat the gateway as a single point of plant visibility and keep a configured spare, because a failure removes monitoring rather than motive power and therefore tends to be discovered late. Check the LAN2 link and the internal bus connector at each outage, verify that event timestamps remain consistent after any NTP change, and confirm the Primary/Backup roles after replacing one unit of a redundant pair — an 1TGE120021R0010 restored with the wrong role will fight its partner instead of supporting it.
Warranty and Quality
Each 1TGE120021R0010 is supplied as the MLink gateway with its fieldbus variant and hardware version verified against ABB’s product data, and with the current replacement ID 1TGE120021R0110 disclosed up front so the buyer can decide between a like-for-like unit and the successor. Units are inspected for connector condition, power-up and communication behaviour before dispatch, and carry a 12-month repair, replacement or refund commitment. Support focuses on what actually determines whether the replacement works: matching the fieldbus variant to the cabinet, recovering and re-downloading the device mapping through MNavigate, restoring primary/backup roles in redundant pairs, and advising on the system release and software image that the installed MNS iS generation requires.
