Hello Boneless,
Well I am one of your customers that would preffer that you use A.B.
You guys and Alpha Laval are the only ones that keep putting Siemens on our almost completely A.B. Platforms.
I get where you are comming from in the question you are asking.
You work for a boiler company and your projects are spread all over the country (all over the world for that mater) so you are not dealing with one specific geographical area.
I dont know alot about siemens but I do have a S7-1200 that I bought to play around with and would say that the S7-1200 would compare to the A.B. Micrologix 1400.
Have not used the S7-300 or 400 but from looking at what you guys installed in your cabinets on some of our other ships I would probably agree with Donnchadh and say that the 300 might compare with CompactLogix line.
The Micrologix and CompactLogix each use a different software, Micrologix Uses Logix500 and CompactLogix Uses Logix5000. So you will want to be aware of that before purchasing both.
If you want to try out the Micrologix you can Download RSLogix500 Micro-Lite Starter Software from the Rockwell site for free and try it out as Emulator or you can purchase a Micrologix 1100 and give this free version of the software a run on an actuall Logic Controller. (Software will work on the ML1000 also but the 1100 has ethernet so probably better bang for your buck.) 1100 and 1400 are pretty similar but the 1400 will handle more expansion modules and has a few more bells and whistles.
Unfortunatly the Free version of the software will not work on the 1400 so you will have to purchase the full blown software to use the 1400 model.
I dont think you guys are scheduled to upgrade another one of our vessels for quite some time yet (but with these old ships you never know) If you find yourself in the area while we are on the dock stop by and I can show you all the A.B. line up from PLC-5 to ControlLogix and pretty much everything in between.
Take care and glad to hear that you are considering using AB, hopefully that will be the case by the time we upgrade the boiler on my ship. (T-4 years and counting)
BCS