SoMachine and Schneider Electric

Hello all,
I was hoping someone could give me some advice. I recently went to a small display put on by one of our vendors that had some demos of some Schneider products. I'm fairly green to plc's but I can do simple ladder logic and such. This software explained to me seems "too easy" and there isn't a lot of information about it via the web. I've only used rslogix and ladder logic, thats where my plc experience stops. I have not used function blocks or seq. charts and I suppose I should start there.

I've been tasked to do some simple controls for a automated box folding device. We went though the proto-type and it worked as designed. It was just a AB 1100 and some pneumatics and switches. Now we must build a sellable machine and this got a lot more complicated from engineering. There is going to be 3-4 stepper motors with encoder feedback, 16 inputs, and 10 output valves. There will be no complicated math just a simple sequencing machine. Being green I've got a lot of work\learning ahead which I'm fine with but just starting from scratch and picking a platform is a bit intimidating.

At the displaying of the Scheider products I noticed that all the motion control can be done with one piece of software (SoMachine) and personally I can't really believe that its going to be that easy. They offer training and complete customer service which so far seems really great. They have visited twice and helped kinda pick out what I need. They have engineers that you can also call for help in design and programing. This all can't be true!

Does anyone have opinions with their products and or any other advice for me?

*Sorry for the grammar I'm in a rush and gotta run out.

Great stuff. I still know AB products better, but started to use the Schneider stuff a few years back. I like it more and more - especially the higher end stuff. It's not any cheaper, but the tech support is great.

robertkjonesjr said:

Great stuff. I still know AB products better, but started to use the Schneider stuff a few years back. I like it more and more - especially the higher end stuff. It's not any cheaper, but the tech support is great.

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Would a training session be a good thing to get familiar with the products and how to apply them? From what they said their ladder logic is lacking in SoMachine as most of Europe is moving away from it and to SFC and FBD. I do have help but picking out controls I'm pretty much alone. I'm scared hold me!

Don't be afraid
I had used ladder logic for 20 years, but now I use function block whenever I can. It makes for a much more readable program, far easier to fault find. By grouping all the logic for a particular device into an area you don't need to scroll up and down through rungs. Even discrete logic is much neater when you are able to use an AND or OR block with up to 31 inputs (try having a permissive chain of 31 interlocks in ladder)

And I find Schneiders tech support to be excellent

SoMachine is basically CoDeSys 3 and Vijeo Designer packaged together with some frilly bits sticking it all together!
CoDeSys 3 can be downloaded for free from the 3S website. You must register on the site to download. There are plenty of tutorials for CoDeSys 2 on the internet and much of it is relavent to the newer version as it supports the same languages (IEC61131-3). It also comes with a soft PLC to try your code. Function Block Diagram isn't difficult when you get your teeth into it. CoDeSys also support CFC - Continuous Flow Chart which is the next evolution of Function Block Diagram.

chris_in_dav said:

SoMachine is basically CoDeSys 3 and Vijeo Designer packaged together with some frilly bits sticking it all together!
CoDeSys 3 can be downloaded for free from the 3S website. You must register on the site to download. There are plenty of tutorials for CoDeSys 2 on the internet and much of it is relavent to the newer version as it supports the same languages (IEC61131-3). It also comes with a soft PLC to try your code. Function Block Diagram isn't difficult when you get your teeth into it. CoDeSys also support CFC - Continuous Flow Chart which is the next evolution of Function Block Diagram.

Click to expand...

This awesome and I'm already tinkering. So different then just simple ladder. Everything I've done before could be done with just RSlogix light. This opened up a whole new thing for me. I'm sure I'll have some more questions shortly