Keyence PLC Experience?

[alive15]

Hey guys, has anyone worked with any type of Keyence PLC and could share their experience with it? Vendor showed me camera footage reply of a work cell with the plc live, thought that was pretty cool.

Thanks,

 

[bill4807]

Yes i have worked with the KV8000A a little bit.
There are some things that could definitly be better, but you get that with any manufacture.

But overall i thought it was nice to work with. Somewhat like omron and mitsubishi.

I would use it again. The pricing for the software and hardware i thought was a little high though. I would use the PLC with a different HMI, for price savings. Havent actually tried it yet though..

 

[alive15]

The rep told me their software was free; the hardware seemed comparable to Compact Logix, about $3k; although they may have given me a discount since I never purchased before.

 

[bill4807]

Yeah thats what they alluded to for me as well.
But they gave me a free 30 day trial, which is what i used for the project.
I think the software package is about 3-3.5k as well.
Just verify that..
The hardware is comparable, with a built in EIP port.

If the software package was cheaper i would throw the keyence plcs into my hardware rotation.
But i already have paid for omron, mits, and AB softwares.
So unless the customer requires it i probably will not be for now at least.

I did like it though.
You need to still setup the keyence products just like any other PLC. They just have the AOP built in, instead of having to import them.

 

[IO_Rack]

We have used Keyence PLCs for many years since we get a lot of machines from Japan. Keyence has only been supporting them in the USA for less than a year. Their staff is young and inexperienced, the manuals are hard to read as the translations from Japanese isn't very good. They keep telling me that's their biggest complaint and they are constantly improving them.

As Bill mentioned, it's very similar to Mitsubishi. I do remember Omron being klunky like that but they have come a long way. The Keyence software (KV Studio) can take some getting used to as the translations in the software are much like the manuals.

The PLCs are very functional. You get a lot of bang for the buck, speed, memory, fieldbus, motion control, specialty modules, etc... They do compare with any of the big boys out there, in my opinion. The software contains the configuration utilities for all of the above.

If your project is in a hurry you may not want to chance it. If you time and can afford it, get one and play around with it. It appears they are really trying to push these units into the field so you can probably talk your rep into a lower price.

 

[RVaughan]

Is it Keyence under the hood, or have they rebadged someobe else's controllers?

 

[I_Automation]

I was 'invited' to make a few updates to 3 welding cells that had Keyence PLC's and each had 4 remoteIO cards.


Learning their KV Studio wasn't difficult with experience in RSLogix, Mitsubishi GX Developer, and Omron CX Developer. My Keyence rep was helpful when needed.



A couple of tricks I had to learn, but otherwise it was intuitive. That was a good thing as I ended up only keeping about 10 rungs of the program and completely writing my own.

 

[alive15]

Thanks for the info guys!