Experiences with "no brand" PLCs and HMIs

As the title states, what are, if any, your experiences with no brand PLCs and HMIs. I know that big projects/customers usually go with well known brands. But did anyone experiment with heaps of other PLCs and HMIs offered mainly from Chinese markets and such. In terms of:

- Reliability
- Comparison of programming softwares and device manuals
- Support from manufacurers

I had very little exposure to this market except one case of pin marking machine where I found that manufacturer pretty much answered any of my questions straight away and was very supportive.

Thanks!!!

Wow, not a single reply

Did I hit a touchy subject here or nobody is doing "budget" projects?

We try to use name brand items. While researching C1D2 explosion proof monitors, I came across a low priced option. It turned out to be just a store brand monitor with the plastic front pulled off, placed inside a metal case. Definitely not intended for 24/7 use outdoors.
I buy LED lighting from China. The product you get after buying a sample is almost always different from the sample. And replacement orders are different from that. No consistency and high DOA rates.
Like I tell my kids, you are never disappointed when you buy quality. It may cost more than you want to spend but you will have it a lifetime.

If you search hard enough, you will find that some of these "off brands" are branded and sold by bigger name brands. Delta Electronics rebrands a lot of their products for other companies. I have found some off-brand parts rebranded under Mitsubishi and Omron.

I don't use off brand products because my customers would not accept them. 90% specify Siemens and the rest specify AB

A customer who used to be purely Mitsubishi is now purely AB apart from their 90% installed Mitsi lol

cjd1965 said:

I don't use off brand products because my customers would not accept them. 90% specify Siemens and the rest specify AB

A customer who used to be purely Mitsubishi is now purely AB apart from their 90% installed Mitsi lol

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I hear this or similar often.
I wonder if this idea to accept the best available from one manufacturer instead of the best available for 'my project' is really worth it?
I think that I have heard all the arguments of training, spare parts, etc. I just don't see where any of those arguments is 'really' a good ROI?

RussB said:

I hear this or similar often.
I wonder if this idea to accept the best available from one manufacturer instead of the best available for 'my project' is really worth it?
I think that I have heard all the arguments of training, spare parts, etc. I just don't see where any of those arguments is 'really' a good ROI?

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Hi Russ
You need to remember that both Siemens and AB both offer plcs from the small compact type upto the largest.

Provided you select the appropriate plc for the task it would not be hugely more expensive than a non brand and they have the reassurance the brand will still be around in a few years.

Cheers

It's what the job can afford

When I worked for food and drug companies nothing but AB for US equipment, and Siemens for foreign machines. This was for reliability and repairs. but when you make $1.50 a bottle profit at 300/min you can afford the best. But the soap or napkin end, at $0.15 profit per bar or pack at 50-100/min it takes more to pay back. In this case a from what I seen the smaller manufacture is used more ( Omron, Redlion, AD...).
But bottom of the barrel stuff that is not reliable should not be used where people are involved (operators) in my opinion. Its like driving a Vette or BMW verse a colbalt or vw they all work

Greetings,

To clarify, every PLC is a brand from a manufacturer. However, some brands are more recognizable / popular than others.

With that said, there is a market for embedded PLCs. What some call OEM PLCs. We represent a company called Triangle Research. There products are quite resilient. More information can be found through the following link:

http://www.eternity-sales.com/tri-plc/tri-plc.htm

Documentation is available on our web site. Support can be done via email regarding questions. Any additional support you would be requiring we would need to discuss in detail. We have a customer that we work with in New Zealand who uses one of their products and is both happy and a repeat customer. So geography is not as much of an issue as it once was.

There is much that can be done with a small footprint that is expandable. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here, pm or email.

Shalom and God Bless,

Roamer_AUS, what no-brands are you looking at right now?

Have you looked at Mitsubishi and Omron? They are not lowest cost but are popular.
If you are looking for a small PLC, then Mits is the one in your area.

They both have a good line-up of HMIs with some very powerful features you will not find in any of the other big brands. On the other side, their programming s/w interface is old and cumbersome and not my preference.

Weintek (Maple Systems in USA) has a lot of HMIs. They are a Chinese company and offer hardware with some great features for low cost. Programming software is outdated and best for small to medium complexity.

Reliability is entirely based on experiences and opinion. Do you need it to run 3 years? 8 years? 15 years? Are you going to support replacement and fixes, or does your customer handle that? There are hardware bugs/defects as well as software defects. In my experience, dealing with s/w issues is far more expensive to fix (costs with time) than a defective h/w.

Most lower cost vendors will let you download their software for free or trial. Sometimes they can loan you a PLC and HMI for a week or so to play with. You should do that. Take a quick look at their software and see if it is your style. Learning a new programming software is costly in time and troubleshooting later on, so you'll want to make the right choice early.

If cost is a factor, look at Unitronics or Horner APG (office in Oakleigh). They offer HMI + PLC combined. Smaller size and can be less cost.

Given all that, the best support is likely to come from your local distributor. Choose one that has competent technical knowledge and knows how to help you when you need it.

cjd1965 said:

Hi Russ
Provided you select the appropriate plc for the task it would not be hugely more expensive than a non brand and they have the reassurance the brand will still be around in a few years.

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While the staying power and obsolescence timeline are good points and important, in my experience, AB is actually hugely more expensive than other quality but smaller brands. I mean, quote a 30 servo system with tight performance requirements on AB vs B&R or Beckhoff (assuming AB has a solution that is fast enough, which is not a given), and you will find AB is usually in range of 50 to 100% higher.

Remember the hardware is only a part of the picture.
The programming software and more importantly, the SUPPORT, is where the real value is. A new programmer should not even consider anything without a very good phone support system otherwise you will be digging yourself a deep hole.

There are affordable options in proven brands where there should be no need to look at China "press your luck" equipment unless its for hobby use.

A lot of "Brand Name" stuff is re-branded "Off Brand" or "Other Brand". These branding agreements are very common and allow a brand to focus on what they're good while still offering a wide product range. Servo motors and VFDs are pretty common re-brands since motor windings and bearings are way outside the wheelhouse of a PLC/Drive maker and VFDs are widely considered a commodity item, even now that they are more and more commonly included in the Coms network instead of discrete wiring.

Also common with some brands is the option for customers to re-brand it themselves. That's why you rarely see a B&R PLC in the wild despite them having a larger market share than Omron, their HMIs and APCs more often carry the OEM's logo (Krones, Loma, etc). As people have mentioned in this thread, some people specify Rockwell or Siemens, so letting OEMs re-brand your stuff can be an advantage vs trying to turn panels into billboards.

As far as experience with cheaper, lesser known stuff, Galil and Trio are both decent little platforms for simple motion applications and ProFace has all in one HMI/PLC/IO units that can handle simple logic and IO on the cheap. All three have been around for years and will stick around for years. For even cheaper stuff, as long as you don't end up using a lot of platform specific functions, you can always port a small project to a different platform later if you need to. For a large, logically complex project, or a project with high-end computational or complex motion requirements, I would stick with a company that has an obsolescence guarantee and will qualify your project requirements for you. I'd also make sure they have local experts that can help you (looking at you Elau).

GTUnit said:

Remember the hardware is only a part of the picture.
The programming software and more importantly, the SUPPORT, is where the real value is.

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This is a great point. You probably won't need support for something like a ProFace, but if you're doing robotics/CNC, camming, lots of coms, signal processing, or generally doing something platform specific, you need to have the training and support available, if not locally, then within a days travel. Of course, they need to have enough people available too.

Since this Forum is can make it seem that anything that isn't Siemens or Rockwell is "Off Brand" and poorly supported, I thought I'd list the top PLC makers in order from 2007 (This is just PLC, IO, and drives; some of these companies make much more money in other business sectors):

• Siemens (More than half of sales are in EU)
• Rockwell (More than half of sales are in USA)
• Mitsubishi Electric
• Schneider Electric (most sales in Electric Utility area)
• Omron (more than half of sales are in Japan)
• B&R (Privately held, rarely reveals sales figures publicly)
• GE & Fanuc (separate as of 2009)
• ABB
• Beckhoff
• All Others, such as ProFace, Culter Hamer, Honeywell, Bosch-Rexroth-Indramat, Baumuller, Kollmorgen, Koyo, etc. are less than 1% PLC sales each and account for about 10% all together.

All of the Brands in this list have world wide support available. Some, like Schneider have disparate product lines that are causing problems (they acquired Elau, and a lot of people left, the remaining guys are slammed). Some, like Beckhoff only sell direct and don't have many satellite offices (meaning you're paying for flight, rental, hotel for a support visit). Others, like Rockwell charge for even basic support.

This list order is from 2007, since then, Rockwell has grown more than Siemens (not sure if they actually overtook the lead), Beckhoff had legal trouble with Rockwell, but got in deep with cigarette machines to make up for it, B&R tripled in size and is now bigger than Omron, GE-Fanuc broke up, Omron gained against Mitsubishi, and Schneider started supplying everyone with re-branded Altivar VFDs and miffed the takeover of Elau. Keba has burst onto the scene in postal and ATM applications and is using that funding to try and go after Beckhoff/B&R/Schnieder-Elau (the high technology crowd).

CapinWinky said:

This is a great point. You probably won't need support for something like a ProFace, but if you're doing robotics/CNC, camming, lots of coms, signal processing, or generally doing something platform specific, you need to have the training and support available, if not locally, then within a days travel. Of course, they need to have enough people available too.

Since this Forum is can make it seem that anything that isn't Siemens or Rockwell is "Off Brand" and poorly supported, I thought I'd list the top PLC makers in order from 2007 (This is just PLC, IO, and drives; some of these companies make much more money in other business sectors):

• Siemens (More than half of sales are in EU)
• Rockwell (More than half of sales are in USA)
• Mitsubishi Electric
• Schneider Electric (most sales in Electric Utility area)
• Omron (more than half of sales are in Japan)
• B&R (Privately held, rarely reveals sales figures publicly)
• GE & Fanuc (separate as of 2009)
• ABB
• Beckhoff
• All Others, such as ProFace, Culter Hamer, Honeywell, Bosch-Rexroth-Indramat, Baumuller, Kollmorgen, Koyo, etc. are less than 1% PLC sales each and account for about 10% all together.

All of the Brands in this list have world wide support available. Some, like Schneider have disparate product lines that are causing problems (they acquired Elau, and a lot of people left, the remaining guys are slammed). Some, like Beckhoff only sell direct and don't have many satellite offices (meaning you're paying for flight, rental, hotel for a support visit). Others, like Rockwell charge for even basic support.

This list order is from 2007, since then, Rockwell has grown more than Siemens (not sure if they actually overtook the lead), Beckhoff had legal trouble with Rockwell, but got in deep with cigarette machines to make up for it, B&R tripled in size and is now bigger than Omron, GE-Fanuc broke up, Omron gained against Mitsubishi, and Schneider started supplying everyone with re-branded Altivar VFDs and miffed the takeover of Elau. Keba has burst onto the scene in postal and ATM applications and is using that funding to try and go after Beckhoff/B&R/Schnieder-Elau (the high technology crowd).

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Very interesting, but I did a little digging and found that in 2012 Rockwell Automation (Allen-Bradley) Control Products Sales (Worldwide) were $3.6 Billion USD and the total sales for RA was $6.25 Billion.

In 2012, Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions Sales (Worldwide) was $15.8 Billion with a net sales for Honeywell itself at $37.6 Billion.

Considering that Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions had more than twice the sales of the whole of Rockwell Automation, I wonder how that really accurate these numbers are.