busarider29
Lifetime Supporting Member
AB of course their support is great (kidding)
To me, I dont care... I will install or sell whatever the end users want, I have found that all the support I need is either on Google, this site or in the user manuals, I have said it many times a PLC is a PLC
Fair enough. Well, I've done the comparisons myself ---> Beckhoff CX to AB ControlLogix and briefly, here are my findings:
Processors: Advantage Beckhoff. Does AB have anything that compares to an Intel I7 12-core 2.1Ghz processor?
Field Bus (EtherCAT vs Sercos): Advantage Beckhoff. EtherCAT more robust and easier to use, plus twice as fast as Sercos. AB has no support for EtherCAT. So, if you've got an AB ControlLogix system, forget about EtherCAT.
I/O and hardware selections: Advantage Beckhoff. Way more to choose from with their hardware plus specialty I/O that AB doesn't have.
Analog I/O update rates: Advantage Beckhoff. 10 kHz with their XFS series analog I/O. 50kHz with their measurement module series. Does AB have anything that comes close??
Small footprint: Advantage Beckhoff. ControlLogix still using those big clunky I/O modules with the rack system.
Price: Advantage Beckhoff. No explanations needed here.
Development Software: Advantage Beckhoff. TwinCAT software is free and offer all IEC 61131 programming languages free (CodeSys IDE). AB's software is proprietary, not free, and although they do offer the option for the IEC 61131 languages, the only one that comes standard in their software is Ladder. You have to pay for the rest of them if you want them. That is the last that I knew anyway. I use at least three of the languages on a regular basis.
High speed Data Acquistion: Advantage Beckhoff. AB's platform is not designed for high speed data acquistion. If you need that with AB, then you have to integrate something (National Instruments?). With Beckhoff, its all-in-one system. It can do machine and motion control as well as high speed data acquisition. No need to integrate third party.
Safety: Advantage Beckhoff. Way more flexible and much less expensive than AB's safety.
Documentation: Advantage AB. Okay, I'm not a big fan of Infosys from Beckhoff's website so I'm giving slight edge to AB here. Everything is there in Infosys but I find it difficult to navigate and find what I need sometimes.
Support: Advantage Beckhoff. I don't care that there are a ton of AB applications engineers in my area, they don't give me the level of support that my one Beckhoff guy does. My Beckhoff guy has even written sample code for me a number of times, WebEX'd online with my machine a number of times, and will drive an hour drive to be here in a day's notice. AB doesn't do that. Their support involves configuring the hardware for you if you need help, and giving you solutions for problems in which most cases trying to sell you something additional to meet your problem with a paid solution. If a "bigger" customer calls them while they are here supporting us, well guess what? They say "see ya, gotta go".
One other thing that I will definitely give advantage AB is their Ladder editor. It is way more polished than Codesys' ladder editor. Still, not nearly a deal breaker for Beckhoff considering all else.
This is a very brief, high level, comparisons that I found.