Rockwell Price Madness

[dmroeder]

I pulled up the quote less than a month ago to compare it to the higher-priced one.

Read my comment about not using the official RA distributor chain.

My bad, I scrolled right on past that post.

 

[ronny_resistor]

Sorry but we dont use micro800 except for a cheap i/o block tried programming it once and instantly regretted it. Suppose it's all about what your used to. Also I had a friend in Turkey who getting stuff from Rockwell fir 40 -60 % cheaper than what we can buy it for in North America. He was dumping machinery into North America and no one could come close to his pricing. I believe the last micro820 we bought was around $400 canadian dollars if I remember correctly. We typically utelize the micro 800 touchscreens they connect to the 1769 and the 7 inch model was around $800 canadian

 

[Firejo]

Sorry but we dont use micro800 except for a cheap i/o block tried programming it once and instantly regretted it. Suppose it's all about what your used to. Also I had a friend in Turkey who getting stuff from Rockwell fir 40 -60 % cheaper than what we can buy it for in North America. He was dumping machinery into North America and no one could come close to his pricing. I believe the last micro820 we bought was around $400 canadian dollars if I remember correctly. We typically utelize the micro 800 touchscreens they connect to the 1769 and the 7 inch model was around $800 canadian

When the Micro800's first came out, the version of CCW that came out with them was miserable software and came close to destroying the Micro800 market place. In my opinion it took Rockwell way to long to fix it but they have. It is still different than RSLogix software but it's getting better and Rockwell is making a deliberate effort to make it so that if you know how to use one (CCW or Studio) you know how to use the other.

 

[Firejo]

1769-L16er-BB1B same for both quotes, and I wasn't buying from an RA distributor, so one part of the problem is "RA own the market and no one apart from our approved sales channel can get involved".

CCW was a bit of a MS issue, first tried it on my Hyper-V setup laptop, instant regret. Changed to VM Workstation Pro and less issues, but still, it's meant to be for entry level stuff.

Most installers come with the tick box exercise, or the master tick box installs everything. With CCW I had to get separate installers, unzip, run different installers. Compared to installing MySQL as an example, if it doesn't have it you just click 'execute' and it goes and gets it.

Do you think you will see a Micro850 (or similar) in 2055? I don't. There's other threads on this forum about their hardware locking up for no valid reason.

My local RA distributor don't stock much, they stated 5 days lead time. On a prior project (5069-CPX), they stated 10 days, it took 5 weeks. JIT manufacturing?

I didn't call them evil. Just stating I'm in the same boat of comparing alternatives.

I actually like the "closed" channel model that Rockwell uses. I think it protects the end users and system integrator's more than it hurts them. With the distributors "protected" from low budget/low price competition they don't have to cut their prices to the bone to win business which means they can afford to provide good service and support. Everyone in the chain is there to make money and at the end of the day, when you are talking about a multi-million dollar automation system a little more cost to ensure higher reliability from all aspects (including the distributors) is typically more than worth it. Down time, especially in a public utility application, means many many dollars and having to wait until Monday morning at 8:00 am before someone from the company that sold you the equipment can say "sorry we don't support that. Call the PLC manufacturer" doesn't fly (I'm generalizing but the point is there).

As to installing CCW, with all of the different versions I've installed over the years I've never run into something where I had to get and/or execute separate installers. The installer packages that I've used does install separate software packages but it does it automatically. I don't understand why you are seeing something differently and I can see why that would be very frustrating but I've never seen it.

Yes I think there will be plenty of Micro 800's still in service in 2055. As a percentage of the number sold, probably not as many as a MicroLogix 1100 or certainly a CompactLogix but that isn't the intended market either. The Micro 800 is, in some respects, a new market for Allen Bradley. It isn't a direct replacement for one product line but rather part of a change in strategy to "change the mix" as it were. In some applications it is the replacement for a MicroLogix 1100 but in others the CompactLogix is. As I see it, instead of four product lines covering cost and capability there are now three. Instead of ControlLogix (high), compactLogix (med/high), SLC (med/low) and MicroLogix (low), there will be, ControlLogix (high), CompactLogix (med) and Micro 800 (low). That's a very simplistic view but the principle (I believe) is sound.

If I miss spoke and implied that you called Rockwell (or their products) evil I apologize. A lot of people do hold that mindset and I didn't mean to lump you in with them.

P.S. Great conversation and I find your comments and/or point of view valuable.