beckhoff pc

has anyone tried any of the beckhoff pc lines?
have a machine that just came in that has a cx1000 , i believe the display is created with visual studio.net.
curious if anyone has ever connect a display or created a hmi type package with a beckhoff unit with something like omron cx supervisor,entivity et.
thanks

We have just installed a production line with all beckhoff equipment on it. Having NO experience with this I contacted Beckhoff how helped enormously. Getting was done using TCP/IP via the Lauer control screen. Again, our system used a Visual Basic front end but behind the seens there was Step 5 for windows, which is unbelievably easy to use.

Check it out on IBHSoftec.de

ATB....

We have a Beckhoff control system on one of our machines. A standard Beckhoff softPLC connected by PROFIBus to all the equipment, drives, guages, temp controllers, IO blocks etc.

I wrote the majority of the Visual Basic interface to produce a HMI screen on the PC. It's quite difficult to begin with but once you have the hang of it it's quite straight forward.

I haven't used it with anything else I'm afraid.

Why not get a PROFIBus card or similar for the PC and connect a HMI that way?

Can't you just use a standard HMI touchscreen using the modbus protocol?
That way you don't have the extra hassle of installing software on the pc etc.
Maybe it's no answer to your question but I am curious myself.