Trio motion.

A customer wants to replace the Allen Bradley PLCs with Trio PLCs in all the coming motion projects.
The customer is always right, but can you convince them to start with one simple project to prove the concept?

Your question raises many questions about the relationship between your company and the customer. What exactly does your company do for this customer? If you're the integrator, why is the customer asking you to change your design? If you're only building the panels to their design, why do you care what brand they spec? In the systems you've been building for this customer what have you been using for motion control up to now? What's wrong with the current design that makes the customer want to change? What benefits are they expecting from the change and why are those benefits so important to them? Are Trio/Kollmorgen offering any assistance in converting the PLC program to their platform?
 
I have used TrioMotion on a project. It is the strangest setup I have encountered. You always have to be online with a controller, so for at your desk development, you use their Virtual controller as the "online device". You connect to an actual controller with one of 3 modes, each with limitations of programming. They do have some good motion commands, but the logic part is just basic boolean. They used to be part of a package with Control Techniques, but CT has their own motion controller now.
 
The customer is always right
No!!!!!! Sometime you must educate. Other times you must walk away when you don't feel comfortable with their plans.

What's wrong with the current design that makes the customer want to change? What benefits are they expecting from the change and why are those benefits so important to them? Are Trio/Kollmorgen offering any assistance in converting the PLC program to their platform?
It is probably the cost difference. Trio is relatively inexpensive compared to Rockwell. We don't see much Trio in the US or Canada but in China everything must be low cost. The management often doesn't see the hidden cost of going cheap.

A lot depends on how demanding/complex the motion application is.
Simple point to point moves may not be an issue.

In the sawmill industry the OEMs charge extra for making changes to their control systems.
 
The customer is always right, but can you convince them to start with one simple project to prove the concept?
Short answer: No.

Your question raises many questions about the relationship between your company and the customer. What exactly does your company do for this customer? If you're the integrator, why is the customer asking you to change your design? If you're only building the panels to their design, why do you care what brand they spec? In the systems you've been building for this customer what have you been using for motion control up to now? What's wrong with the current design that makes the customer want to change? What benefits are they expecting from the change and why are those benefits so important to them?
All very valid questions, but the internals of the commercial side of this is beyond the scope of my goal for this thread. I'm sorry.

Are Trio/Kollmorgen offering any assistance in converting the PLC program to their platform?
No.
 
I have used TrioMotion on a project. It is the strangest setup I have encountered. You always have to be online with a controller, so for at your desk development, you use their Virtual controller as the "online device". You connect to an actual controller with one of 3 modes, each with limitations of programming. They do have some good motion commands, but the logic part is just basic boolean.
Yes, I'm feeling that pain now.
 
In my experience, when decisions made from the top with no thought to the technical, support, or commissioning headaches, I step aside and let someone else go through the pain. I hate letting another vendor in but I hate having a project that may not have an end in sight because of details that are out of my control.

On the very rare occasion, it actual swayed the customer back to what I would support.
 
I am having flashbacks to a past life...

In the past, I worked for two companies that specialized in motion control products. I worked in the applications engineering and systems engineering groups. The products we represented were not in the mainstream when it came to machine control, but were quite innovative when it came to motion control. When the products were used to control motion only, they performed well. When the customer tried to go on the cheap and utilize the motion controller as a cell or machine controller, things always got sticky because of the inherent differences at the time between a good motion controller and a PLC (the differences were MUCH greater then than they are now). If the customer was building multiple machines and selling them as a PRODUCT (meaning that they had a very specific and limited feature set), then all would work out well. The extra time spent developing the application would be worth it because there were multiple machines to sell and development costs could be distributed among several machines. However, most of the customers I dealt with were special machine builders. They would build one or two machines of one design, then move to a completely different project as soon as the debug was done. In the cases of a special machine builder, using the motion controller as a PLC made for pain at every stage of the project.
I wish you luck on your project. I do not miss those days of working with salesmen and customers who always knew "the best solution" to their control needs. It is funny because while they always knew the best solution, they usually needed a specialist to come in and bail them out when things got sticky.
 

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