Please be gentle

ganutenator

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May 2002
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kansas
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Some of my competitors are cutting costs on their panels w/ some cheesy plastic enclosure and using propitiatory circuit cards that eventually fail and are expensive to replace.

The opposite companies w/ the most expensive controller w/ the most expensive plc and hmi.

So many bugs and quality issues, I feel like there is def. a market for a low cost system that can compete quality wise and feature wise.

I unfortunately only know how to do it w/ the high cost pc and hmi.

Is there a way to get your finished plc program put on a circuit board?
 
Why? I feel your pain. Cheap is good? At the end of the day I often have to go and fix cheap is good - at my rates! Why a circuit board? Geez - people amaze me sometimes.
 
This will depend on the end user. A PLC is expensive but is standard... if the company goes out of the business or, as is very common, the main man of the company dies or retires to a tropical island you have to spend the money again re-engineering and lose on production.

I would make sure to raise these points with any potential customer and be brand agnostic as much as possible to be sure I could put something proper in any price range and still get the business.

Just this morning before coming to work, I was on the Arduino forum and someone was looking for a solution to basically create a two button control so that, in his mind, the system he was building conformed to the safety directives. Do the cheap board makers actually test and get their boards certified when it comes to safety?

If you know how to program in a text based language and have a good understanding of data types (e.g. you're not used to Rockwell stuff), I would look into the industrial versions of Arduinos (industruino). they come in a box, some like the ruggeduino are very well protected and for small stuff that doesn't interact with humans could be a choice.

At the end of the day, certain systems are built around microcontrollers like these either way. Most fire fighting pumps I've seen had a control board that has one of these controllers inside for example. But, if you do go this way... keep a copy of the arduino version you used to program and do not update libraries as that can break the whole lot.
 
Please let's not devolve this into another AB pricing bash thread.

How much do you value your time?

Some people figure, "The pay's the same, no matter what I'm doing", and so the cost they worry about is the cost of hardware.

I've seen meetings discussing whether or not its "worth it" to spend $1000 more on a particular part; but if you look at their billing rate if they weren't in the meeting, it would be cheaper to buy the more expensive gizmo than to have the meeting discussing it.

Time is money. But just as you don't see where time goes, you often don't see where money goes either. You only know you don't have enough, and so look at the places where you can see that it went -- the cost of the hardware.

But some systems allow me to use tools (especially Excel) to create code much, much faster than other systems, where every instruction has to hand-entered, and every rung "drawn".

But those systems cost more for the hardware & software, but save me time.

Take 32-point I/O modules for example: Yes, one high-density module cost less than two equivalent modules. And they take less rack space, potentially means smaller racks and panels. But the time it takes to land 32 wires into that tiny space increases the time spent getting the panel ready, and is harder to maintain and troubleshoot if one of those wires isn't quite right.

The cost savings goes out the window.

If you're building a standard machine -- an autoclave or a filler -- and you plan on putting out dozens of the same thing a year, then using a printed circuit board might make sense. The design will be complete, so there will be less to troubleshoot, and all the technicians in your company will understand how the boards work.

But if you make bespoke systems and are merely trying to standardize methods, then using commercial components like PLCs makes more sense economically.
 
We had the same issue years ago with enclosures.
I googled electrical enclosures and got a good list of vendors.
for example, enclosures. Hoffman, Rittal, EMF and 1 or 2 others.
we bought an ENF enclosure for a project and it was good quality, and a lot cheaper.

you might start there, then go to terminals, ab, phoenix, wago, automation direct and so on.

I do apologize if I have broken any forum rules by mentioning the brand names.

a little here and there can make a big price difference.

james
 
I used to tell my customers "I never argue with those who sell for less. I figure they know what their stuff is worth."

To paraphrase Steve Bailey, there are three keys to business success. Best price, best quality, best service. You must pick two - you can't have all three.

I set my business model on best quality and best service. I felt that over the long haul it served me and my customers. Others choose to compete on price - that's a legitimate choice, but not a race I wanted to run.
 
I once lost out on a bid to build a control system for an OEM (solar trackers) where I was using a small PLC and I was competing against someone building a "green board" proprietary controller; he came from a company that made talking children's toys, but he convinced them that he could build them a quality controller. He won because each controller would cost them $1,000 less than my solution. He sold them over a thousand systems, then they started to have failure issues But while the toy designer was fixing his issues, he died in a motorcycle accident.

They were SOL for 6 months as a new programmer was brought on board, reverse engineered this guy's green board controller, then redesigned it with the PLC I had originally proposed and got them back into business. Net losses exceeded $1 million... 1,000 times what they had saved in hardware cost using that green board controller.
 
What equipment are you currently using? Do you really need to be using the most expensive controllers?

I'm with this..
If someone can make a cheap board to do what a high end PLC needs to do then good for the team working on the boards. Otherwise I'd think the high end PLC wasn't needed and using smaller items will be more cost competitive against said boards.

We have developed small boards over time at my company because they don't need to do what a PLC can do and usually have a smaller defined task. Those are slowly getting phased out since PLC's are becoming smaller and more affordable.

As already mentioned in another post - when developing boards always keep the future in mind. If one person does the work and is no longer able to support it, where does that put your customers and company?
 
I don't know if there is a company that will do this for you.. However you can put your program on a circuit board.
Like some people here have mentioned, the safety ratings and ISO certs are one thing that many micro-controllers probably don't have. (I have not looked maybe they do).

However some of these chips are used in aircraft and state of the art defense stuff, so I would assume some are very robust, but building a board is a lot more than a chip being rated for stuff. Your board would have to be designed dummy proof with built in safeguards for incorrect wiring, ESD, vibration, ect.

Some companies do their controls in the microchip world, and some stick with PLC. On this forum your going to find the PLC people, you could look into PSOC that may be slightly easier to program basic ladder logic stuff.

The big issue I see with using a micro-controller is not having the ability to view the program while running / tag values / edits and all the nice features that makes commissioning a piece of equipment easier.
 

Have they added online monitoring?
Do they have replaceable batteries - no, I don't mean disassemble the whole thing, lose the program, unsolder and resolder new batteries.
I mean POWER-ON replaceable batteries.

Have they made a better output module. The ULN2083 and whatever the pnp version was, both failed too many times.

incompatible software with specific hardware revs..

too many things that I found frustrating with digi/rabbit/whatever name that they go by now.
 
A couple of things not yet mentioned:

PLCs tend to have long life cycles, and the manufacturers typically announce end-of-life well in advance and allow lifetime-buys before ending production. They rarely stop making just one IO board...if the product series is still in production, you can still buy all the bits for your system.

When you build up your board from parts, you have dozens of parts, each of which may or may not be available the next time you want to build your boards. So you have to have an engineer on staff (I have been that guy) that figures out how to make the boards using what you can still buy. Maybe it is just a package change, or faster logic chip instead of old slow logic chip. Or maybe you can't buy the VFD display any more and have to re-write the code for an LCD display. Then the next time you build boards, the new part isn't available, but the old part has been second sourced... Also, Fox stopped making the crystal in that frequency, but ETC still has one...except the ETC rock doesn't reliably start...Oh, and you got a batch of mis-marked resistors in that aaaalmost work, and it takes you a couple of weeks before you unsolder one and measure the damned thing...yes I have seen this once with AB branded resistors.

In short, if you build boards just once every year or two, you are going to require a EE who understands the board to baby-sit each production run. Custom board/Embedded control really only makes sense for products that are in continuous production. You will still have to find replacements when components are obsoleted, but at least they generally come along one at a time, instead of the 12 that you'll have if it was 3 years since the last batch.

Low cost PLCs offer some middle ground. I've had pretty good experience with idec PLCs and panels. Automation Direct (Koyo) PLCs seem to be OK, but those little C-more displays are garbage. I think Turk has some low priced stuff, but I have no experience and have heard they are problematic. The programming tools tend to be much lower featured, and even though they use ladder logic, the ones I have used only offer basic instructions, so it is similar to assembly level programming. Still you can have a complete PLC rack for under $1K.

If you have a PC based HMI anyway, you might use a virtual PLC. TwinCAT is pretty awesome, and are some inexpensive IO options...like using AutomationDirect modules via modbus IP. But use etherCAT if you can swing it, it flat out rocks!
 
Some of my competitors are cutting costs on their panels w/ some cheesy plastic enclosure and using propitiatory circuit cards that eventually fail and are expensive to replace.

The opposite companies w/ the most expensive controller w/ the most expensive plc and hmi.

So many bugs and quality issues, I feel like there is def. a market for a low cost system that can compete quality wise and feature wise.

I unfortunately only know how to do it w/ the high cost pc and hmi.

Is there a way to get your finished plc program put on a circuit board?

what size enclosures?

how many IO on the PLC?

are you using a pc based HMI or a touchscreen? What size?

I know how to do cheap. There is no reason you cant do it cheaper with quality products.

IMHO a custom board is never a good option for the customer.
 

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