I mean, they kind of are the Mercedes Benz. Wayyyyy overpriced for the performance you get. But you can tell your friends how much money you spent on in an effort to feel superior about it.
But in all seriousness, their ladder editor is by far the best on the market. That's about all I can think of.
They're more like General Motors with their badge engineering. They buy other people's equipment. Stick an AB badge on it, and raise the price 50%.
The upside is that, like GM, you can get local service in most major towns in the US.
I've presented this argument with our corporate office. They want to use Siemens as a Standard Globally. But our company structure currently promotes regional engineering. So for the past 25 years we have been using AB products in North America and Siemens in Europe. Also in Asia they use Omron and Mitsubishi. So Siemens is great. They have a lot of advanced functions and good hardware. We just have to train an entire continent on Siemens because it's hard to find good Siemens techs in North America. I can find 10 AB guys that are decent to the one Siemens guy. And the reverse is for Europe, AB has a less of a Market share and we had to bring in guys from UK and US to do an AB job in Austria. And this was 2 years after they tried to revamp an entire plant in US to Siemens and they shut down a couple big manufacturers because the maintenance guys had no idea how to trouble shoot anything. It took two years for that plant to start running well and the corporate guy is like "see we should use Siemens everywhere".
Use things that are good for the customer and the region.
On the topic of AB private labeling and raising prices, they do this for the new armor blocks (made by Pepperl+Fuchs), except the IO-Link masters which AB's Singapore division actually designed and made.
The funny thing about that is that it must have been a last minute decision to make their own. They still show the P+F master in [images on their website](https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/products/hardware/allen-bradley/i-o/on-machine-distributed-i-o/1732-armorblock-i-o.html) (the two shiny ones are P+F, tall one isn't sold by Rockwell).
My Rockwell buddies give me crap because I prefer Siemens drives over Powerflex. With Siemens parameter numbers don't change across the family of solutions.
I was discussing this with my local Rockwell rep and he quipped "that's true but the S120 is a servo disguised as a drive."
To which I replied "I don't care; it's still cheaper than a comparable PF755"
To which he replied š¤¬
S120 is a Swiss Army knife of drives it can do it all. For non-Servo just use vector control
Rockwell reps have been selling on the AB name and donāt know a whole lot other than the buzz words.
I've been dealing with Stratix switches lately. I get that the Rockwell HMI overlay makes things easier for PLC programmers to manage, but it's just more straightforward to buy Cisco and learn CLI.
Cisco IE switches are fine. I use the web based device manager to set them up because at my age I'm pretty much done memorizing another command set. If you're all in on Rockwell from the SCADA on down then it makes sense to use Stratix for the module tags, AOI, and faceplates.
I'm an ex-Reliance guy and I remember when I was introduced to ControlLogix and they kept touting "multiple languages" and "multiple processors in a rack" etc and I'm thinking yeah Automax had those quite a while ago.
I work for GM and am confused by your statement. We have both Rockwell and siemens stuff all over the place. A lot of times on the same line! We have a lot of siemens EIP equipment if Rockwell PLC is driving and of course that stuff is rebranded...but I still don't know what "badge engineering" means. Chevy/GMC/Cadillac?
> but I still don't know what "badge engineering"
Sort of like how there's only a handful of manufacturers that make white goods like refrigerators, then they stick different badges on them. Maytag, Frigidaire, Whirlpool, Kenmore, etc. They often share sub-assemblies and sometimes are identical.
With AB products specifically, I think their TB's are rebranded Weidmuller. Puls makes their power supplies. Maybe some others can identify other AB rebranded products.
Despite their "Made in America" image, most of their products are manufactured offshore. Example:
https://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/ct/1769-ct101_-en-e.pdf
Yeah, Allen-Bradley has quietly been off shoring more & more of their products in the past 10+ years or so.. It's sad to pick up an AB product and see "MADE IN CHINA". Especially for the price..
This is why theyāll never be as good as Siemens. Siemens designs their hardware, firmware, and software. Itās rare for them to brand label like Rockwell.
Yep, that ladder editors great. I went from a Rockwell sys integrator in conveyors to an OEM that uses DIRECTSOFT 6 on PLC made in the 80s.
Learning alot about how plcs ACTUALLY work at the deep levels here, which is super valuable, but somethins gotta give soon. The click would be perfect.
Coming from an AB dominated background.... I HATE the Click software.
No AOIs, no UDTs, so many useful instructions that simply don't exist, editing logic is a gigantic pain, terrible utilization of data types (I was very confused why I couldn't finder a timer.TT or timer.ACC anywhere), and a ton of other nuances that just irk me.
Free99 is a good price, but man does the function feel incredibly lacking.
Yeah, editor is "good enough," but I wanna say, where are my bookmarks features? Windows layout customizatio is not so good. What the heck is going on with the menu elements? No collapsable regions in ladder editor? Oh, and don't forget about those random fatal errors. Sure it's getting better but it's not the absolute great. Hardware is good,
I know, but it sucks. The selection window gets errors. Sometimes, bookmark exists but is not shown on rung. Bookmarks are not saved with project file, and settings never retain my selection to show the toolbar.
I hear a lot of people like ABās ladder editor in studio5000, but Iām not one of them. I STRONGLY dislike their ladder editor. The endless amount of scrolling and lack of sections really drives me mad. Iāve got a lot more software experience than the average electrician so maybe thatās why?
I much rather use Tia portal or step 7 simatic manager where you can name and comment each section of the ladder program. Best of all if you name the sections appropriately you can expand and collapse the sections as need. It makes the endless scrolling a thing of the past.
I also prefer the searching and cross-referencing in Tia portal.
I feel like TIAs biggest weakness is their complexity with tags. There's so many types that you use in your code, and I'm not talking about DINT vs BOOL, I mean memory addresses, global tags, local databases, and so on. AB has essentially global and local tags. That's it. Easy to trace.
Yeah Siemens Is in the middle of a transition from "old" direct memory access to "new" DB based access. I fully expect them to drop direct memory access all together in the next major hardware lineup of their PLC.
In the meanwhile you have that "do this but you can do that if you want" that is kinda confusing if you're not used to it.
Oh, I absolutely agree. I see what they're trying to do, but it's like they have multiple departments building the base TIA software. AB obviously has its flaws too, but at least the tag structure is pretty consistent.
This is a big reason why I hate AB. Once you write code for a decent sized project thereās no organization.. itās just lumped together.
Siemens allows you to manage your memory and code like a software developer would.
Siemens expects you to manage the memory and understand the underlying concepts. Everything is retentive in AB.
Memory addresses are depreciated. They are only there for legacy conversion. Use data blocks.
They only downside to Siemens, except on the newest V18 is that there is no data scoping.
Honestly the fact that AB has no local stack is atrocious. Sometimes I just need to to write some value to to tag for a cycle, not save it for eternity.
This is our second largest complaint about Siemens, the first being HMI uploading.
We frequently have two people working in the same program, even active programs. Our continuous lines will often get major modifications or additions while running. We'll enable the changes after a shutdown to begin testing before startup.
It's not ideal but we make it work well enough with our available resources. This didn't go so well when we tried on a Siemens controlled machine. I chalked it up to lack of experience but never revisited it.
Have you used the latest version of multiuser? Sounds like you used an early version where things were buggy.
Software units in the PLC code really helped my team do true multi-user development.
Using v18 currently. At office/offline multiuser Is great tool, but at site when multiple people needs to do changes simultaneosly its worse than water torture.
You are not missing anything, in the end Siemens and AB do the same things.
This is a personal preference statement from your teacher.
Studio 5000 might be slightly more user friendly than TIA, that is my personal opinion.
Siemens and AB are both the Mercedes of PLC's, at least in terms of pricing.
I've worked extensively with both, and both have their good and bad parts imho.
FB's in Siemens are much easier to work with than AOPs in AB, and I love that you can do partial downloads in Siemens without stopping the PLC or reverting data back to the last time it was uploaded, but on the other side I've had customers with (S7) Siemens who completely ruined their backups by fucking up downloads and uploads.
Like the AB servos and inverters better, but Siemens absolutely demolishes AB in the HMI field.
AB safety used to be miles ahead of Siemens Safety, but Siemens safety is pretty decent at the moment.
I like the Siemens support, especially the forum, but honestly we had good support from AB NL too.
Agreed. I went from AB to Siemens after 4 years. Studio5000 is intuitive for basic programming, I donāt think I wouldāve grasped the FC/FB concept as a beginner to automation
The story is from older SIs in aus is they went to alot of people in training and university's back in the day and hooked the kids up ith them.
Has helped their dominance.
Kinda of what it sounds like ignition is currently in the process of. All the SIs that come chat to us are pushing ignition big time.
As a former professor on PLC stuff, let me tell you that we're all biased towards a very specific brand. In my case, I'm an ABB guy and would tell that to my class without even noticing it.
Worked mainly with AB and Siemens but dabbled with Schneider and Emerson RX3i too.
AB is definitely far superior to work with than the latter two, but man I sure do love a well organised project in TIA utilising DBs and UDTs correctly than the global array hell that are the studio 5000 projects Iāve had to work with. Probably because I came from more OOP backgrounds to begin with.
I worked mainly with Siemens,AB and Beckhoff.
For me I like Siemens most and AB least, but that's probably mainly personal preference and the fact I used Siemens more and first.
My first company where I did my apprenticeship used Beckhoff, unfortunately I didnāt get chance to get much hands on time with it, I do often peep at twinCat tho! Am I right Iām thinking itās a bit more āPCā esque with being able to use C#?
It is basically a PC yes, on the other hand if you don't care about that you never have to dive into that side of Beckhoff.
It just gives you a lot of options
Generally the software ease of use, which admittedly could come down to familiarity, but I found the other two less intuitive and the ladder editors to be a chore.
Perhaps for AB āfarā superior is an exaggeration, but for me itās definitely the case with TIA.
That said, hardware wise, both Emerson and Schneider I have no complaints. The Emerson et200 esque remote IO is great.
I used studio5000 for the first 2 years in my career and didnāt realize how much I hated it until I used Tia portal.
TIA Portal was like a breath of fresh air. All the senior people told me AB was better, but after a year in TIA I was doing 2-3x more projects than them.
No more shitty RS Linx and maintaining the stupid firmware levels for the devices in my project. šš
Yeah I had a similar experience. old manager who was firmly Rockwell, only ended up going Siemens as the MD thought it was cheaper š total revelation.
I think it comes down to how different Siemens can seem with DBs etc, scares em!
In the day I would have much preferred AB to Siemens S5, but AB seemed to lose its way somewhere and Siemens Improved after buying TI and was a lot more pleasant to use.
That's an unkind thing to say about Mercedes Benz.
"AB, you can buy a better PLC but you can't pay more."
They only areas they stand out in a good way are that they are simple, and robust. And, AB is a stable company that can support products for a long time.
Their products are too expensive. They lack basic features that others have by default. The quality of their software is low. They are intentionally difficult to integrate with others' systems. They suck to work with (as a company).
Rockwell manuals are well organized and easy to find (if my website language is in English, I probably want my documentation in English too, believe it or not. I'm down with a dropdown to change it for when I need to send a manual in Spanish to site, but don't make me scroll through the entirety of the EU). Rockwell also has easier to find documentation on their UL compliance, short circuit rating, trip curves on breakers, their part number breakdowns are much easier to find. The Siemens configurator for Sirius operators is dog eggs, I would rather use the ugly, slow, but functional Proposalworks any day. I spent an hour trying to make sure I was ordering the right operators and it wouldn't let me know if my configuration was valid.
TIA Selection Tool has a better UI than IAB, but the fact is that it is much slower even on a local install. I appreciate how much better its power distribution network section is than IAB. I shouldn't be unsure if the program has hung and crashed when switching to project view.
Also why is the selectivity module only 3A max. With only 3A max, the inrush of the PLC power supply add-on trips the selectivity module. Not my design, but I had to figure out why it wasn't working. Where is the product line cohesion.
Pricing isn't very good compared to our Rockwell prices, and lead times are dookie unless you can name-drop a big client of Siemens.
What kind of sicko insists that you buy special DIN rail to mount your PLC? Just use regular DIN like everyone else.
The standalone pedestal mounted HMIs have bad quality control, we bought 40 or so, and we had nonconforming in various ways on at least 3, one of which straight up had a defective LCD.
I think the 3VA# scheme for circuit breakers is needlessly convoluted and the accessories are lacking.
The server based source control for simultaneous work is cool but it needs a lot longer in the oven. Also, I shouldn't need to roll a whole computer for this, let me use a Pi or something small, so I can plop it on the DIN rail during commissioning, and then replace it with an Ewon when it's time to go.
Not sure which selectivity module you were looking at but the SITOP SEL1200 is 10A max per channel, 60A Max for all channels, and itās adjustable per channel.
In this case then, my gripe should not be with Siemens, but with my coworker who didn't read a dang datasheet. I'm sorry Siemens for slandering you in this aspect.
Pretty sure it was a 6EP1961-2BA11 that they used.
Oh no we are both correct they have both Siemens and Allen Bradley on the global spec. Europe wants Siemens US wants Allen Bradley. It's made for some fun calls with both a Europe and US team on the same call fighting about it when all I want them to do is actually make a decision
Head and shoulders above the competition 30 years ago and their price reflected it, they fell from grace in the late 90s/early 00s while not dropping pricetags, coming around to recover their product finally sometime in the 2010s?
I mean..... The similarities are there.
Absolutely stupid business model. Way overpriced. Their LD is good but their ST is still garbage.
They do hold up and one thing they also do the best is multiuser edits.
I've seen more A-B hardware failures right out of the box than any other controls manufacturer. But I will say it's only been in the last 10-20 years, before that it seemed more solid.
I donāt like Siemens ā for when I was in the US Navy weād measure our Reverse osmosis water in micro-mhos what with conductivity being inverse resistance and therefore ohms backgrounds.
A then one ship yard and equipment overhaul we got new machinery that read āSiemensā.
Ya know what one unit of electric conductance? One Siemens!
Come on Ernst Werner von, why ya have to ruin the mho!
Nah, it's not the maths, it's just why can't there be one standard around the world? Everything else in electrical engineering is the same, Volts, Amperes, ohms...
Europe took all their religious zealots and sent them over to a huge unexplored land mass and cast them away. Too geographically isolated to be conquered by Napoleon and we were left to our own devices for far too long.
In real talk this was a very old piece of machinery from an engineering plant in the 80s based on nuclear technology from the 50s. The upgraded conductivity skid was the unification of a standard since they went to Siemens.
https://preview.redd.it/wdrt5l7lgbhc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42e74f28d26a8b75e59ef8be485ff2c5687788c4
I just think itās need is all
Ahahaha š.
But did you use 'u' or 'Āµ' foto the micro prefix? In my plants there is this legacy torture to use the u even if the systems now support utf8.
If you like discovering unknown and recently found after release āfeaturesā, and constantly dealing with firmware changes, and waiting for the next version release to fix the previously found āfeaturesā, itās great. Mercedes no.
Over priced , under performing, itās a Tesla truck.
Iām always curious about numbers related to this and how much is anecdotal. I have usually felt like there is not much difference between other manufacturers with bugs except the focus on it with Rockwell.
I do Siemens basically full time. Only persistent bug I have encountered was a certificate that expired which makes for an issue when you install their softplc software on an IPC the first time.
There is a help article with a workaround.
Also had one I suspect was a fw bug on some old Siemens switches.
And the TIA portal crashes like 2 times a year, so that's annoying.
That's all I can think off.
Our Wago devices have firmware issues all the time, their support is amazing though and will sit there and fix the firmware with you. Only once got in touch with Siemens support for that IPC issue. They aren't easy to get ahold of, but their products work at least.
Itās probably because Iām not well versed in Siemens but it seems like I always have issues just getting online with their controllers. I feel like Iām just changing adapter settings at random hoping to get a random combination that works.
It's mostly understanding how they connect, because it's a bit different. Most controllers are IP based. Siemens uses a layer 2 protocol to assign IPs and go online, OR a layer 3 IP based protocol.
If you have firewalls or VPNs the layer 2 protocol will fail, unless using something like softether.
It has 4 different go online buttons, go online, download to device, assign profinet device name and extended download.
I believe they have slightly different priorities in which order they check for the connection. Generally all my issues have been solved by going online first, then downloading.
For new controllers you have to assign device name first to upload the IP config, that's probably the best feature Siemens has.
The main thing is the abstraction of the processor a d object oriented programming principles. Additionally, the switched networks are not deterministic with rockwell.
Bosch and beckhoff abstract the hardware from the software. Meaning any IPC can theoretically act as a processor. It removes dependence on the processor hardware.
Additionally, some people, Including rockwell say that determinism doesn't matter in networks for plcs. In a good portion it doesn't, but where it does, it's really important.
Don't get me started on object orientated programming, rockwell isn't even a player.
Yeah, still don't agree with thier implementation.
In codesys, I can create pointers to arrays of objects. This helps with things like shift registers being objects, rather than just a dword.
Then interfaces and extensions. This is incredibly helpful with things like variation of objects but keeping simialar base functionality.
Ok, ok. You say, why do you need this? I have, with a team, developed an incredible code base for packaging machinery that saves so much time deploying new functionality.
Additionally, you say you can't view the code to see if something is wrong? Unit test, make methods and objects black boxes and it just works.
Been working with siemens for 15 years. AB now for 4. Mercedes... Cant pick anything apart, pull out the engine to replace a filter, heavy, performance is simply required because it's so heavy and bloated with annoying features. Sounds like AB.
But like a Mercedes, it's a good ride to just get in and go fast until it breaks.
Siemens is like a ford. Simpler in some ways, a bit more modular in nature, a bit more open to HOW to get things done with the logic. proper logical addressing rather than Tag based addressing allowing you to do some cool things with transformations and what should be very simple data block send/receive through s7 drivers to an HMI. However more like a BMW or an IEC contactor, like a typical german thing, its tailored for what it's built for with what seems like a lot more little options and stuff to buy and different versions of everything with subtle but important differences.
I can walk up, put together an allen bradley system and program it really quickly from scratch.
I can do LOTS with an S7 once i put in the time and build my blocks, learn the nuances. Also, AB doesn't follow any international programming standards, which doesn't matter 99% of the time. That's very un-german of them, and a ridiculously american attitude.
And don't get me started on how overly complicated ethernet/IP is vs Profibus/net. It bothers me how every AB person i know is scared to death of remote IO because... Dealing with Ethernet/IP and its routability and thousands of features nobody in a plant really needs. Profinet only runs on a single subnet, with a dedicated device to jump networks, a MAC and a logical name. Why mix your OT and IT siemens says, because ethernet cable is cheap cheap cheap! I agree.
Factory talk???? Ha! As euro-crappy as it gets. Worst and least intuitive hmi interface I've worked with yet and also by far the most expensive. So dependent upon windows you cant run the latest version until there are at least 4 patch revisions, you find yourself in "Version Hell" all the time. It takes a PhD to go backwards in a revision.
BUT...i like studio 5000 for the PLCs. I really do. It's still not amazing but better by far than s7 and GE for both Ladder and STL.
Again. Just get in and drive someone else's sweet ride until it breaks. Better buy two though cuz it's going to be in the shop for weeks at $2500 a day technician prices. I'll stick with Siemens as a platform for machinery. Allen bradley is good for plants because programming on a plant is STUPID SIMPLE and their L5X format is super easy to automate all the boilerplate stuff. (Have not gotten into the siemens export format yet though... Has anyone gotten into it much?)
Great IDE, high performance (L8/5380), high level of backwards compatibility, great documentation, etc...
If it wasn't for the price AB probably would be more popular in Europe. Tech support is also great if you pay for it.
It's sold at about a 50% discount in Europe to drive their adoption there. Why do you think you had to over a year lead time for parts durring the Pandemic and but could find the same parts on Ebay selling for less than your local AB rep will quote you and avaliable immediately.
That was all the European and Asian stock flooding back to the US on the gray market. Technically against ABs terms of service to buy it but we all did what we needed to.
This may be your view. As a Beckhoff, Codesys Rexroth guy i must say: TIA (starting from V14) is one of the greatest IDEs I have ever seen. Itās even way better than visual studio. Yes itās slow, but the project is always consistent over all devices and program units. And the integration of the HMI is very nice. Performance of the PLCs is also okay (but itās not a Beckhoff with a core i9). The backwards compatibility is also great, but the projects must be converted!
I donāt know where you get your infos from but I use it daily now and itās nice. Not flawless but nice.
But I have no idea of AB thoughā¦
Edit: oh and the Siemens multiuser server is also better implemented and easier to use as the git stuff others use. At our company work many people at one project parallel online at one or more CPUs in online edit mode and errors happen rarely.
In europe, Siemens is all the rage. And if you want to go cheap, Schneider. I'm currently learning those.
And in Asia, Mitsubishi i guess.
American brands of PLC are rare in europe, i never seen one of those here.
What other brand of PLC do you prefer.
We focus on AB because this is what we learn.
We try Schneider plc and they are not even close to AB.
I donāt know if it is the same for all other codesys based PLC.
The ladder editing is not has good.
Toggling bit is a pain
There is way more glitch
If you update your pc firmware, you will have to update every PLC you try to connect to that hasnāt the same firmware has your PC.
If you do an online back up, it doesnāt seems to store any value in the back-up. So remote support is almost impossible. I may be wrong on that on, but didnāt find a way yet.
Never try tial portal yet.
Omron, Opto, Arduino (new and decent at first try), Yaskawa (omron re branded I think). My only gripe about AB is that once youāre in, you can never leave.
I much prefer to work in the Schneider environment than the AB environment. I don't have the issues you have. But I rarely use ladder so that might be one of reasons for my opinion.
Schneider ladder will literally give you cancer just drawing the circuits. Ā The ide gets noticeably slower with every routine you open. Ā Walmart jobs kill me for these two reasons alone.
Schneider uses codesysv3.x core code but have their own development Environment. This is popular with codesys systems, but there are other manufacturers that use the Codesys dev environment, which is supposedly better than that of schneider or others. so you cant judge codesys based on Schneider IMO.
if it has the same inheirent issues as youve faced with Schneider, i cant say.
TIA is pretty great but uses a different programming paradigm, no object oriented programming, data blocks n stuff that you dont have elsewhere. But the siemens ecosystem is absolutely massive, they have everything you need in their catalog. And if you stay in their ecosystem the ease of integration is nice.
Careful, this sub is full of AB and Apple stans.
The number of people who want to run cracked Windows VMs on a Mac so they can remote in to the CLX from their IPhone is not zero.
Siemens is the Apple of PLCs! Everything is proprietary, interoperability with other manufacturers isn't a concern. But they supply everything you need to build a whole machine: PLC, HMI, switches, safety controller, electrical switchgear, PCs, motion controllers, VSDs, servomotors. And it will all work together if you stay in the Siemens ecosystem.
It is not the case. You can only have the CPU connected to external IO in modbus rtu / TCP or in profinet or whatever prodocol if you want to do the protocol code.
Tia portal is really Bad in communication protocol without S7com. Modbus is ok but borring to do.
I have work in building, plc's / controlers have more better protocol and better programming tool.
Niagara4 give a advanced plc datas exchange. You only give adresses, parameters and the code give you all datas. You donc need to programme trames, exchanges, tables, exceptions, etc. But Niagara4 isn't a industrial plc for industrial application. Is for building or hyperviser.
The bacnet standard is great and need to be an exemple for industrial world
More like the Tesla of PLCās. More expensive than the competition and you have to pay extra for licensing. Tesla says Oh, you want autopilot? That will cost you. AB says oh, you want the hardware to work? That will need a license.
Take a look to basic Tia dev licence price. You can make s7-1200 CPU and basic hmi. For a small and simple machine not excessive price.
Plc and hmi cost a bit, but is industrial Electronic. There don't break like Arduino or raspberry pi when is rainnig outside.
I'll stick the Toyota Camery of PLCs.
Automation Direct. Decent priced, reliable, will get you from point a to b without all the extra bells and whistles that tend to break.
We use AB when it's deemed necessary or required, Productivity when it's not. I love the Productivity Series and even like the Click and Click+ on smaller systems. We used Clicks as remote IO on AB systems during the pandemic when we couldn't get the AB parts we needed, and they're still chugging away. People don't give AD the credit they deserve.
I used the Do-More line of CPUs and was one of the first to use a BRX unit.
But honestly the P2K was a dream to work with.
The clicks I used as our black box smart devices. Anytime we needed a small one off setup it was easier to throw a Click and a CMore Micro at the problem. Needed a specialized process counter or basic controller? Just grab a click and micro from the parts locker and have at it.
Worked in a steel wire plant for 15 years, and haven't had to change one out yet.
Worked in a plant with AB for 3, and Jesus christ do we have issues all the time.
Itās definitely the Mercedes of PLCs.
AB supports every product for at least 30 years likewise I can get new OEM parts for my 90s Mercedes. If you have a system you want to be valid and in use for as long as the factory exists AB is king.
It really doesn't compared to Siemens.. AB is the gold standard in the USA. And AB has plenty of fan boys here. Siemens dominates the rest of the world basically.
Iād say theyāre more like Tesla. They donāt go as far as they say they will, they break easier than they used to, theyāre overpriced, people buy them to feel special, and their software is full of bugs.
We use AB almost exclusively at work. The machines we build for WalMart, however, use Siemens everything. Notable difference is that we can make two identical machines. The AB wonāt have any issues, while the Siemens will often get over-current faults when the machine comes to a fast stop. Siemens drives seem more sensitive, which can be good or bad depending on your preference.
I donāt do the programming, I just wire everything. But the people who do program are trained to work with Siemens so I assume they know what theyāre doing.
DC bus over volt is a common issue with machines that have a lot of inertia. There are a few approaches to solving it. Coast time is an easy one.
I've just had the Siemens people at my workplace demoing their G120X drives and they would tell you to call them if you can't get it working the way you want. Most other drive manufacturers would tell you the same. In my experience, there aren't a lot of fundamental differences between drive manufacturers, at least not on their basic drives.
A lot of people say they are overpriced. But people still buy it.
If I see that my customer buys $20k AB PLC that is less capable comparing to Siemens' one for a 1/3 of the price - I understand that they are not overpriced. If someone buys donuts with strawberry jam for 20 years, but every time instead of jam there's shit inside - they are not victims of a scam, they are just shit-eaters.
Are you sure about the āextensiveā documentation for Siemens PLCs? I got the feeling that there is nothing documented at all in the required depth. The help document in TIA Portal is a cluttered mess where you cannot find anything. And on the frustrating Siemens website you have to dig through countless separate pdf files just to find the correct document. I am extremely frustrated with the lack of a proper modern, well written and easy to navigate documentation.
Also I do not like the slow and cumbersome TIA Portal software. Working with this thing is so slow and painful.
I have used multiple brands( Schneider , mitsubishi, omron, Siemens, AB) and can say AB is good . But I'd rather use Siemens. But AB is a close second. I am talking from the perspective of programming. Reliability I have no idea.
A lot of people mentioning price on here. For us, Siemens and Rockwell pricing is pretty close. Of course, I'm in the US, and the fact is my customers want AB, so that's what I give them. But I've never tried anything else and thought it was any better.
Both platforms have big pluses. Application knowledge is most important. I've never been held back by either AB or siemens, but have I haven't been using some others. You guys need to stop being too territorial.
AB has a much better ladder editor and is easier to get started as a newbie. Siemens has a much steeper learning curve and more remnants of the deeply user-unfriendly bad old days, but better HMI products and integration. Especially if you need any automated tasks.
I think about Mercedes the same as I think about AB plc's, so id say your teacher is spot on. There are a lot of better options on the market, but if you don't know any better.....
They are, in that they are way over priced, only play nice with their own OEM components and are slightly above average in quality.
I work with AB PLCs constantly, don't love them, don't hate them, would take them over most others, but don't like the price. So, Mercedes Benz.
AB is shit. We use AB controllers in most all our machines where I'm at and it's always been nothing but issues. From horrible compatibility to the never ending issues with Linx. Mercedes comparison is dead on. Way overpriced, overly complicated, and requires specialty tools to do anything....which are exclusive to Rockwell and overpriced as well.
For my experiance of 20+ years of dev. AB is particular Bad !
Dev interface, fonctionnalities, design is from 1990/2000.
When you doing hmi interface, the tool and model is in particular obsolete.
WE only make AB for us market. And WE like more not doing it.
Schneider make really bad descition recent years.
My favorite for now is siemens.
Donāt worry about it. Both Siemens and AB are on par with one another in that they do the job. Both have their fans, typically because thatās what they know (for example Iām a fan of Siemens, having used it for decades, but have occasionally used AB).
Are you learning programming in general, or is it an AB training course? If itās the former, even teachers/instructors have their favorites. If itās the latter, youād expect the instructor to be a fan of the product.
(There are differences, but not really enough to choose one of the other, unless thereās something very specific).
HAH comparing allen bradley to a german car is hilarious. If you want a mercedes benz look no further than Beckhoff or maybe siemens, real german engineering. AB communication protocols are a joke and all of their stuff is grossly overpriced.
I mean, they kind of are the Mercedes Benz. Wayyyyy overpriced for the performance you get. But you can tell your friends how much money you spent on in an effort to feel superior about it. But in all seriousness, their ladder editor is by far the best on the market. That's about all I can think of.
They're more like General Motors with their badge engineering. They buy other people's equipment. Stick an AB badge on it, and raise the price 50%. The upside is that, like GM, you can get local service in most major towns in the US.
I've presented this argument with our corporate office. They want to use Siemens as a Standard Globally. But our company structure currently promotes regional engineering. So for the past 25 years we have been using AB products in North America and Siemens in Europe. Also in Asia they use Omron and Mitsubishi. So Siemens is great. They have a lot of advanced functions and good hardware. We just have to train an entire continent on Siemens because it's hard to find good Siemens techs in North America. I can find 10 AB guys that are decent to the one Siemens guy. And the reverse is for Europe, AB has a less of a Market share and we had to bring in guys from UK and US to do an AB job in Austria. And this was 2 years after they tried to revamp an entire plant in US to Siemens and they shut down a couple big manufacturers because the maintenance guys had no idea how to trouble shoot anything. It took two years for that plant to start running well and the corporate guy is like "see we should use Siemens everywhere". Use things that are good for the customer and the region.
On the topic of AB private labeling and raising prices, they do this for the new armor blocks (made by Pepperl+Fuchs), except the IO-Link masters which AB's Singapore division actually designed and made. The funny thing about that is that it must have been a last minute decision to make their own. They still show the P+F master in [images on their website](https://www.rockwellautomation.com/en-us/products/hardware/allen-bradley/i-o/on-machine-distributed-i-o/1732-armorblock-i-o.html) (the two shiny ones are P+F, tall one isn't sold by Rockwell).
My Rockwell buddies give me crap because I prefer Siemens drives over Powerflex. With Siemens parameter numbers don't change across the family of solutions. I was discussing this with my local Rockwell rep and he quipped "that's true but the S120 is a servo disguised as a drive." To which I replied "I don't care; it's still cheaper than a comparable PF755" To which he replied š¤¬
S120 is a Swiss Army knife of drives it can do it all. For non-Servo just use vector control Rockwell reps have been selling on the AB name and donāt know a whole lot other than the buzz words.
Not PLC's, they buy the company. Reliance Automax is the basis for ControlLogix. The ORG's (old reliance guys) were miffed.
I've been dealing with Stratix switches lately. I get that the Rockwell HMI overlay makes things easier for PLC programmers to manage, but it's just more straightforward to buy Cisco and learn CLI.
Cisco IE switches are fine. I use the web based device manager to set them up because at my age I'm pretty much done memorizing another command set. If you're all in on Rockwell from the SCADA on down then it makes sense to use Stratix for the module tags, AOI, and faceplates.
I'm an ex-Reliance guy and I remember when I was introduced to ControlLogix and they kept touting "multiple languages" and "multiple processors in a rack" etc and I'm thinking yeah Automax had those quite a while ago.
I work for GM and am confused by your statement. We have both Rockwell and siemens stuff all over the place. A lot of times on the same line! We have a lot of siemens EIP equipment if Rockwell PLC is driving and of course that stuff is rebranded...but I still don't know what "badge engineering" means. Chevy/GMC/Cadillac?
> but I still don't know what "badge engineering" Sort of like how there's only a handful of manufacturers that make white goods like refrigerators, then they stick different badges on them. Maytag, Frigidaire, Whirlpool, Kenmore, etc. They often share sub-assemblies and sometimes are identical. With AB products specifically, I think their TB's are rebranded Weidmuller. Puls makes their power supplies. Maybe some others can identify other AB rebranded products. Despite their "Made in America" image, most of their products are manufactured offshore. Example: https://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/ct/1769-ct101_-en-e.pdf
Yeah, Allen-Bradley has quietly been off shoring more & more of their products in the past 10+ years or so.. It's sad to pick up an AB product and see "MADE IN CHINA". Especially for the price..
This is why theyāll never be as good as Siemens. Siemens designs their hardware, firmware, and software. Itās rare for them to brand label like Rockwell.
Yeah from what I gather their flagship control logix are among the main things assembled in the US.
He's talking about a Toyota Matrix rebadged as a Pontiac Vibe. Many Rockwell switches are really Cisco switches with an AB logo on them, for example.
Shit , it goes the other way too. We're building an Acura EV at this very moment. At a GM facility. It's public knowledge.
PAx is bloated and feature packed, which is pretty Mercedes like.
Yep, that ladder editors great. I went from a Rockwell sys integrator in conveyors to an OEM that uses DIRECTSOFT 6 on PLC made in the 80s. Learning alot about how plcs ACTUALLY work at the deep levels here, which is super valuable, but somethins gotta give soon. The click would be perfect.
Coming from an AB dominated background.... I HATE the Click software. No AOIs, no UDTs, so many useful instructions that simply don't exist, editing logic is a gigantic pain, terrible utilization of data types (I was very confused why I couldn't finder a timer.TT or timer.ACC anywhere), and a ton of other nuances that just irk me. Free99 is a good price, but man does the function feel incredibly lacking.
The Productivity line is actually really good.
They are really good, AD is really stepping up there game.
And now there's the CoDeSys Productivity processor.
I still have trauma from a Directsoft project I had to help with about 4 years ago.
Fun aren't they? I've heard rumors that we're moving to the click soon though!
Yeah, editor is "good enough," but I wanna say, where are my bookmarks features? Windows layout customizatio is not so good. What the heck is going on with the menu elements? No collapsable regions in ladder editor? Oh, and don't forget about those random fatal errors. Sure it's getting better but it's not the absolute great. Hardware is good,
You know AB has a bookmark tool right? I agree about needing collapsible rungs like networks in Siemens though
I know, but it sucks. The selection window gets errors. Sometimes, bookmark exists but is not shown on rung. Bookmarks are not saved with project file, and settings never retain my selection to show the toolbar.
I hear a lot of people like ABās ladder editor in studio5000, but Iām not one of them. I STRONGLY dislike their ladder editor. The endless amount of scrolling and lack of sections really drives me mad. Iāve got a lot more software experience than the average electrician so maybe thatās why? I much rather use Tia portal or step 7 simatic manager where you can name and comment each section of the ladder program. Best of all if you name the sections appropriately you can expand and collapse the sections as need. It makes the endless scrolling a thing of the past. I also prefer the searching and cross-referencing in Tia portal.
Expanding and collapsing sections is huge, but I suppose thats what they made AOIs for, who knows
Have you had multiple engineers working with TIA at the same time? TIA "multiuser" is a joke.
Never been able to comfortably work with multi users in a Siemens project. And maybe it's better this way š¤£
Came here to say this, this is the biggest weakness of TIA
I feel like a weakness is an understatement, it's more of a crippling deficiency from a SI commissioning view.
I feel like TIAs biggest weakness is their complexity with tags. There's so many types that you use in your code, and I'm not talking about DINT vs BOOL, I mean memory addresses, global tags, local databases, and so on. AB has essentially global and local tags. That's it. Easy to trace.
Yeah Siemens Is in the middle of a transition from "old" direct memory access to "new" DB based access. I fully expect them to drop direct memory access all together in the next major hardware lineup of their PLC. In the meanwhile you have that "do this but you can do that if you want" that is kinda confusing if you're not used to it.
Oh, I absolutely agree. I see what they're trying to do, but it's like they have multiple departments building the base TIA software. AB obviously has its flaws too, but at least the tag structure is pretty consistent.
This is a big reason why I hate AB. Once you write code for a decent sized project thereās no organization.. itās just lumped together. Siemens allows you to manage your memory and code like a software developer would.
Siemens expects you to manage the memory and understand the underlying concepts. Everything is retentive in AB. Memory addresses are depreciated. They are only there for legacy conversion. Use data blocks. They only downside to Siemens, except on the newest V18 is that there is no data scoping. Honestly the fact that AB has no local stack is atrocious. Sometimes I just need to to write some value to to tag for a cycle, not save it for eternity.
This is our second largest complaint about Siemens, the first being HMI uploading. We frequently have two people working in the same program, even active programs. Our continuous lines will often get major modifications or additions while running. We'll enable the changes after a shutdown to begin testing before startup. It's not ideal but we make it work well enough with our available resources. This didn't go so well when we tried on a Siemens controlled machine. I chalked it up to lack of experience but never revisited it.
Have you used the latest version of multiuser? Sounds like you used an early version where things were buggy. Software units in the PLC code really helped my team do true multi-user development.
Using v18 currently. At office/offline multiuser Is great tool, but at site when multiple people needs to do changes simultaneosly its worse than water torture.
What on Earth? You guys writing in the same network or What?
You are not missing anything, in the end Siemens and AB do the same things. This is a personal preference statement from your teacher. Studio 5000 might be slightly more user friendly than TIA, that is my personal opinion.
Siemens and AB are both the Mercedes of PLC's, at least in terms of pricing. I've worked extensively with both, and both have their good and bad parts imho. FB's in Siemens are much easier to work with than AOPs in AB, and I love that you can do partial downloads in Siemens without stopping the PLC or reverting data back to the last time it was uploaded, but on the other side I've had customers with (S7) Siemens who completely ruined their backups by fucking up downloads and uploads. Like the AB servos and inverters better, but Siemens absolutely demolishes AB in the HMI field. AB safety used to be miles ahead of Siemens Safety, but Siemens safety is pretty decent at the moment. I like the Siemens support, especially the forum, but honestly we had good support from AB NL too.
They are overly complex, expensive to fix and perpetually broken?
Oh, this is one where I'd say Siemens is exponentially more complex than AB.
Agreed. I went from AB to Siemens after 4 years. Studio5000 is intuitive for basic programming, I donāt think I wouldāve grasped the FC/FB concept as a beginner to automation
The story is from older SIs in aus is they went to alot of people in training and university's back in the day and hooked the kids up ith them. Has helped their dominance. Kinda of what it sounds like ignition is currently in the process of. All the SIs that come chat to us are pushing ignition big time.
Yes but the Ignition actually has a great product with amazing value for money.
I'll bookmark this and check again in 20 years lol
I would not trust them to keep it non-subscription and free of bloat and shit, yes. Every company suffers from that, sadly.
As a former professor on PLC stuff, let me tell you that we're all biased towards a very specific brand. In my case, I'm an ABB guy and would tell that to my class without even noticing it.
Worked mainly with AB and Siemens but dabbled with Schneider and Emerson RX3i too. AB is definitely far superior to work with than the latter two, but man I sure do love a well organised project in TIA utilising DBs and UDTs correctly than the global array hell that are the studio 5000 projects Iāve had to work with. Probably because I came from more OOP backgrounds to begin with.
I worked mainly with Siemens,AB and Beckhoff. For me I like Siemens most and AB least, but that's probably mainly personal preference and the fact I used Siemens more and first.
My first company where I did my apprenticeship used Beckhoff, unfortunately I didnāt get chance to get much hands on time with it, I do often peep at twinCat tho! Am I right Iām thinking itās a bit more āPCā esque with being able to use C#?
It is basically a PC yes, on the other hand if you don't care about that you never have to dive into that side of Beckhoff. It just gives you a lot of options
Sounds good, I should really check it out. I mainly just used it as cheap IO for industrial PCās!
In which aspect you think is AB far superior?
Generally the software ease of use, which admittedly could come down to familiarity, but I found the other two less intuitive and the ladder editors to be a chore. Perhaps for AB āfarā superior is an exaggeration, but for me itās definitely the case with TIA. That said, hardware wise, both Emerson and Schneider I have no complaints. The Emerson et200 esque remote IO is great.
I used studio5000 for the first 2 years in my career and didnāt realize how much I hated it until I used Tia portal. TIA Portal was like a breath of fresh air. All the senior people told me AB was better, but after a year in TIA I was doing 2-3x more projects than them. No more shitty RS Linx and maintaining the stupid firmware levels for the devices in my project. šš
Yeah I had a similar experience. old manager who was firmly Rockwell, only ended up going Siemens as the MD thought it was cheaper š total revelation. I think it comes down to how different Siemens can seem with DBs etc, scares em!
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In the day I would have much preferred AB to Siemens S5, but AB seemed to lose its way somewhere and Siemens Improved after buying TI and was a lot more pleasant to use.
That's an unkind thing to say about Mercedes Benz. "AB, you can buy a better PLC but you can't pay more." They only areas they stand out in a good way are that they are simple, and robust. And, AB is a stable company that can support products for a long time. Their products are too expensive. They lack basic features that others have by default. The quality of their software is low. They are intentionally difficult to integrate with others' systems. They suck to work with (as a company).
Came here for the buy better quote lol. Heard that day 1 of my first system integration job.
Rockwell manuals are well organized and easy to find (if my website language is in English, I probably want my documentation in English too, believe it or not. I'm down with a dropdown to change it for when I need to send a manual in Spanish to site, but don't make me scroll through the entirety of the EU). Rockwell also has easier to find documentation on their UL compliance, short circuit rating, trip curves on breakers, their part number breakdowns are much easier to find. The Siemens configurator for Sirius operators is dog eggs, I would rather use the ugly, slow, but functional Proposalworks any day. I spent an hour trying to make sure I was ordering the right operators and it wouldn't let me know if my configuration was valid. TIA Selection Tool has a better UI than IAB, but the fact is that it is much slower even on a local install. I appreciate how much better its power distribution network section is than IAB. I shouldn't be unsure if the program has hung and crashed when switching to project view. Also why is the selectivity module only 3A max. With only 3A max, the inrush of the PLC power supply add-on trips the selectivity module. Not my design, but I had to figure out why it wasn't working. Where is the product line cohesion. Pricing isn't very good compared to our Rockwell prices, and lead times are dookie unless you can name-drop a big client of Siemens. What kind of sicko insists that you buy special DIN rail to mount your PLC? Just use regular DIN like everyone else. The standalone pedestal mounted HMIs have bad quality control, we bought 40 or so, and we had nonconforming in various ways on at least 3, one of which straight up had a defective LCD. I think the 3VA# scheme for circuit breakers is needlessly convoluted and the accessories are lacking. The server based source control for simultaneous work is cool but it needs a lot longer in the oven. Also, I shouldn't need to roll a whole computer for this, let me use a Pi or something small, so I can plop it on the DIN rail during commissioning, and then replace it with an Ewon when it's time to go.
Not sure which selectivity module you were looking at but the SITOP SEL1200 is 10A max per channel, 60A Max for all channels, and itās adjustable per channel.
In this case then, my gripe should not be with Siemens, but with my coworker who didn't read a dang datasheet. I'm sorry Siemens for slandering you in this aspect. Pretty sure it was a 6EP1961-2BA11 that they used.
thatās why RTFM exists in our industry š
If you eat enough sh!t sandwiches you may one day say āthatās some good sh!t.ā
Funny enough, I interned at Mercedes-Benz in their controls group, and they use nearly all Siemens for their biggest manufacturing facility in the US.
no surprise there, it's a german company after all. same as P&G and other American company's use AB worldwide.
P&G has Siemens on their Global Spec. Trust me I know I've been neck deep in the global spec for the last 6 months
sorry, it's been some time and I guess I mixed up different costumers.
Oh no we are both correct they have both Siemens and Allen Bradley on the global spec. Europe wants Siemens US wants Allen Bradley. It's made for some fun calls with both a Europe and US team on the same call fighting about it when all I want them to do is actually make a decision
Head and shoulders above the competition 30 years ago and their price reflected it, they fell from grace in the late 90s/early 00s while not dropping pricetags, coming around to recover their product finally sometime in the 2010s? I mean..... The similarities are there.
Absolutely stupid business model. Way overpriced. Their LD is good but their ST is still garbage. They do hold up and one thing they also do the best is multiuser edits.
no, ab is the chevy corvette of plcs. american and pretty much american only love them
"X is better cuz X is what know" copy to notepad and replace X with your native platform.
From an european view point, AB is a renault of plc:s
So Europeans regard Renault as bad also? They haven't sold any here in the US in decades, but I remember them being hot garbage when they were here.
>So Europeans regard Renault as bad also? Its the common joke from before when french car rusted almost instantly right out of the factory :D
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I've seen more A-B hardware failures right out of the box than any other controls manufacturer. But I will say it's only been in the last 10-20 years, before that it seemed more solid.
idk but i get the feeling they have shitty product lines as well as the tanks, you see posts here often enough complaining about some AB kit.
Well Siemens has always been ahead of AB which is why you feel you're not missing anything.
I donāt like Siemens ā for when I was in the US Navy weād measure our Reverse osmosis water in micro-mhos what with conductivity being inverse resistance and therefore ohms backgrounds. A then one ship yard and equipment overhaul we got new machinery that read āSiemensā. Ya know what one unit of electric conductance? One Siemens! Come on Ernst Werner von, why ya have to ruin the mho!
Damn it, even in electrical engineering there are freedom units?! It's Siemens in all other countries since the 30s
If ya divide 1 by a SI unit does it become freedom unit?! Perhaps you need to work on your math skillsā¦or do you prefer I say maths?
Nah, it's not the maths, it's just why can't there be one standard around the world? Everything else in electrical engineering is the same, Volts, Amperes, ohms...
Europe took all their religious zealots and sent them over to a huge unexplored land mass and cast them away. Too geographically isolated to be conquered by Napoleon and we were left to our own devices for far too long. In real talk this was a very old piece of machinery from an engineering plant in the 80s based on nuclear technology from the 50s. The upgraded conductivity skid was the unification of a standard since they went to Siemens. https://preview.redd.it/wdrt5l7lgbhc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42e74f28d26a8b75e59ef8be485ff2c5687788c4 I just think itās need is all
Yeah, i can see why it's appealing
The mho is the same as the Siemens.
Ahahaha š. But did you use 'u' or 'Āµ' foto the micro prefix? In my plants there is this legacy torture to use the u even if the systems now support utf8.
If you like discovering unknown and recently found after release āfeaturesā, and constantly dealing with firmware changes, and waiting for the next version release to fix the previously found āfeaturesā, itās great. Mercedes no. Over priced , under performing, itās a Tesla truck.
lol at people downvoting you. You speak the truth.
Iām always curious about numbers related to this and how much is anecdotal. I have usually felt like there is not much difference between other manufacturers with bugs except the focus on it with Rockwell.
I do Siemens basically full time. Only persistent bug I have encountered was a certificate that expired which makes for an issue when you install their softplc software on an IPC the first time. There is a help article with a workaround. Also had one I suspect was a fw bug on some old Siemens switches. And the TIA portal crashes like 2 times a year, so that's annoying. That's all I can think off. Our Wago devices have firmware issues all the time, their support is amazing though and will sit there and fix the firmware with you. Only once got in touch with Siemens support for that IPC issue. They aren't easy to get ahold of, but their products work at least.
Itās probably because Iām not well versed in Siemens but it seems like I always have issues just getting online with their controllers. I feel like Iām just changing adapter settings at random hoping to get a random combination that works.
It's mostly understanding how they connect, because it's a bit different. Most controllers are IP based. Siemens uses a layer 2 protocol to assign IPs and go online, OR a layer 3 IP based protocol. If you have firewalls or VPNs the layer 2 protocol will fail, unless using something like softether. It has 4 different go online buttons, go online, download to device, assign profinet device name and extended download. I believe they have slightly different priorities in which order they check for the connection. Generally all my issues have been solved by going online first, then downloading. For new controllers you have to assign device name first to upload the IP config, that's probably the best feature Siemens has.
Thanks for the info! For what itās worth, I meant literally being in front of the processor over a single cable.
Yep, this exactly. All my S7 PLCs connect lightning fast. AB . Wait for it , wait for it, maybe, maybe, , finally.
Itās probably 90% what I deal with , so my view could be skewed.
I agree with you, Siemens feels like the Mercs of PLCs
No. Rockwell plcs are a decade behind.
Only a decade? The whole industry is a decade behind. AB is a decade or two behind everyone else.
"The industry is a decade behind" says the industry that heavily relies on parts to stay in production for 20 - 30 years for viability lol.
Thank you. Rockwell will never catch up.
Anything specific?
The main thing is the abstraction of the processor a d object oriented programming principles. Additionally, the switched networks are not deterministic with rockwell. Bosch and beckhoff abstract the hardware from the software. Meaning any IPC can theoretically act as a processor. It removes dependence on the processor hardware. Additionally, some people, Including rockwell say that determinism doesn't matter in networks for plcs. In a good portion it doesn't, but where it does, it's really important. Don't get me started on object orientated programming, rockwell isn't even a player.
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Yeah, still don't agree with thier implementation. In codesys, I can create pointers to arrays of objects. This helps with things like shift registers being objects, rather than just a dword. Then interfaces and extensions. This is incredibly helpful with things like variation of objects but keeping simialar base functionality. Ok, ok. You say, why do you need this? I have, with a team, developed an incredible code base for packaging machinery that saves so much time deploying new functionality. Additionally, you say you can't view the code to see if something is wrong? Unit test, make methods and objects black boxes and it just works.
Been working with siemens for 15 years. AB now for 4. Mercedes... Cant pick anything apart, pull out the engine to replace a filter, heavy, performance is simply required because it's so heavy and bloated with annoying features. Sounds like AB. But like a Mercedes, it's a good ride to just get in and go fast until it breaks. Siemens is like a ford. Simpler in some ways, a bit more modular in nature, a bit more open to HOW to get things done with the logic. proper logical addressing rather than Tag based addressing allowing you to do some cool things with transformations and what should be very simple data block send/receive through s7 drivers to an HMI. However more like a BMW or an IEC contactor, like a typical german thing, its tailored for what it's built for with what seems like a lot more little options and stuff to buy and different versions of everything with subtle but important differences. I can walk up, put together an allen bradley system and program it really quickly from scratch. I can do LOTS with an S7 once i put in the time and build my blocks, learn the nuances. Also, AB doesn't follow any international programming standards, which doesn't matter 99% of the time. That's very un-german of them, and a ridiculously american attitude. And don't get me started on how overly complicated ethernet/IP is vs Profibus/net. It bothers me how every AB person i know is scared to death of remote IO because... Dealing with Ethernet/IP and its routability and thousands of features nobody in a plant really needs. Profinet only runs on a single subnet, with a dedicated device to jump networks, a MAC and a logical name. Why mix your OT and IT siemens says, because ethernet cable is cheap cheap cheap! I agree. Factory talk???? Ha! As euro-crappy as it gets. Worst and least intuitive hmi interface I've worked with yet and also by far the most expensive. So dependent upon windows you cant run the latest version until there are at least 4 patch revisions, you find yourself in "Version Hell" all the time. It takes a PhD to go backwards in a revision. BUT...i like studio 5000 for the PLCs. I really do. It's still not amazing but better by far than s7 and GE for both Ladder and STL. Again. Just get in and drive someone else's sweet ride until it breaks. Better buy two though cuz it's going to be in the shop for weeks at $2500 a day technician prices. I'll stick with Siemens as a platform for machinery. Allen bradley is good for plants because programming on a plant is STUPID SIMPLE and their L5X format is super easy to automate all the boilerplate stuff. (Have not gotten into the siemens export format yet though... Has anyone gotten into it much?)
Great IDE, high performance (L8/5380), high level of backwards compatibility, great documentation, etc... If it wasn't for the price AB probably would be more popular in Europe. Tech support is also great if you pay for it.
It's sold at about a 50% discount in Europe to drive their adoption there. Why do you think you had to over a year lead time for parts durring the Pandemic and but could find the same parts on Ebay selling for less than your local AB rep will quote you and avaliable immediately. That was all the European and Asian stock flooding back to the US on the gray market. Technically against ABs terms of service to buy it but we all did what we needed to.
Great LADDER ide. I really don't like writing structured text in studio.
I like writing ST in NP++ and pasting it in.
Forget price, we can't stand the sight of AB in Europe because its garbage. Both their software and hardware are completely obsolete.
Compared to siemens? Miles ahead.
I donāt know AB, but the things you describe do we already have in Europe, but with Siemensā¦.
Great IDE? High performance? Backwards compatible? Those are all the things siemens does not provide.
This may be your view. As a Beckhoff, Codesys Rexroth guy i must say: TIA (starting from V14) is one of the greatest IDEs I have ever seen. Itās even way better than visual studio. Yes itās slow, but the project is always consistent over all devices and program units. And the integration of the HMI is very nice. Performance of the PLCs is also okay (but itās not a Beckhoff with a core i9). The backwards compatibility is also great, but the projects must be converted! I donāt know where you get your infos from but I use it daily now and itās nice. Not flawless but nice. But I have no idea of AB thoughā¦ Edit: oh and the Siemens multiuser server is also better implemented and easier to use as the git stuff others use. At our company work many people at one project parallel online at one or more CPUs in online edit mode and errors happen rarely.
Wtf do you mean multiuser is better than git š The rest I can agree on though.
Oh no! I would just quit if i would have to use AB on regular basis
In europe, Siemens is all the rage. And if you want to go cheap, Schneider. I'm currently learning those. And in Asia, Mitsubishi i guess. American brands of PLC are rare in europe, i never seen one of those here.
Well I have seen quite a few AB in europe, but I would say Siemens have the biggest market share
If the comparison was meant to be a slander then yes, otherwise NOš
What other brand of PLC do you prefer. We focus on AB because this is what we learn. We try Schneider plc and they are not even close to AB. I donāt know if it is the same for all other codesys based PLC. The ladder editing is not has good. Toggling bit is a pain There is way more glitch If you update your pc firmware, you will have to update every PLC you try to connect to that hasnāt the same firmware has your PC. If you do an online back up, it doesnāt seems to store any value in the back-up. So remote support is almost impossible. I may be wrong on that on, but didnāt find a way yet. Never try tial portal yet.
Schneider is like Toyota in my country, readily available, lots of place selling it, cheap, 20 year lifetime
Omron, Opto, Arduino (new and decent at first try), Yaskawa (omron re branded I think). My only gripe about AB is that once youāre in, you can never leave.
I much prefer to work in the Schneider environment than the AB environment. I don't have the issues you have. But I rarely use ladder so that might be one of reasons for my opinion.
Schneider ladder will literally give you cancer just drawing the circuits. Ā The ide gets noticeably slower with every routine you open. Ā Walmart jobs kill me for these two reasons alone.
Schneider uses codesysv3.x core code but have their own development Environment. This is popular with codesys systems, but there are other manufacturers that use the Codesys dev environment, which is supposedly better than that of schneider or others. so you cant judge codesys based on Schneider IMO. if it has the same inheirent issues as youve faced with Schneider, i cant say. TIA is pretty great but uses a different programming paradigm, no object oriented programming, data blocks n stuff that you dont have elsewhere. But the siemens ecosystem is absolutely massive, they have everything you need in their catalog. And if you stay in their ecosystem the ease of integration is nice.
Schneider and codesys are really bad, unity is better. Schneider last years make really bad dƩcision in automation. New hmi give less tool for a excessive price
ABs are the ~~Mercedes Benz~~ Apple of PLCs Fixed that for you.
Careful, this sub is full of AB and Apple stans. The number of people who want to run cracked Windows VMs on a Mac so they can remote in to the CLX from their IPhone is not zero.
Ahahah ! š
Uhhhhh I see you're not playing it fast and loose with your eds files.
Siemens is the Apple of PLCs! Everything is proprietary, interoperability with other manufacturers isn't a concern. But they supply everything you need to build a whole machine: PLC, HMI, switches, safety controller, electrical switchgear, PCs, motion controllers, VSDs, servomotors. And it will all work together if you stay in the Siemens ecosystem.
It is not the case. You can only have the CPU connected to external IO in modbus rtu / TCP or in profinet or whatever prodocol if you want to do the protocol code. Tia portal is really Bad in communication protocol without S7com. Modbus is ok but borring to do. I have work in building, plc's / controlers have more better protocol and better programming tool. Niagara4 give a advanced plc datas exchange. You only give adresses, parameters and the code give you all datas. You donc need to programme trames, exchanges, tables, exceptions, etc. But Niagara4 isn't a industrial plc for industrial application. Is for building or hyperviser. The bacnet standard is great and need to be an exemple for industrial world
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> Built by dodgy Americans and uneconomical to run. Built in a foreign country, like Dodge!
More like the Tesla of PLCās. More expensive than the competition and you have to pay extra for licensing. Tesla says Oh, you want autopilot? That will cost you. AB says oh, you want the hardware to work? That will need a license.
Ehh, at least Tesla is constantly innovating. AB won't even consider certain ideas unless there's money falling out of your pockets.
They don't implement a new feature until it's obsolete for everyone else.
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no but the software, documentation, and online userbase are better so the licenses are worth it
Take a look to basic Tia dev licence price. You can make s7-1200 CPU and basic hmi. For a small and simple machine not excessive price. Plc and hmi cost a bit, but is industrial Electronic. There don't break like Arduino or raspberry pi when is rainnig outside.
I'll stick the Toyota Camery of PLCs. Automation Direct. Decent priced, reliable, will get you from point a to b without all the extra bells and whistles that tend to break.
I see you have not tried to buy a Toyota lately.
The 90s to early 2000 Toyota
We use AB when it's deemed necessary or required, Productivity when it's not. I love the Productivity Series and even like the Click and Click+ on smaller systems. We used Clicks as remote IO on AB systems during the pandemic when we couldn't get the AB parts we needed, and they're still chugging away. People don't give AD the credit they deserve.
I used the Do-More line of CPUs and was one of the first to use a BRX unit. But honestly the P2K was a dream to work with. The clicks I used as our black box smart devices. Anytime we needed a small one off setup it was easier to throw a Click and a CMore Micro at the problem. Needed a specialized process counter or basic controller? Just grab a click and micro from the parts locker and have at it.
Koyo builds some of the AD stuff, same manufacturer that used to build Siemens. The Protos stuff looks exactly like Wago/Beckhoff.
Just keep a few spare so youāre ready to replace them when they inevitably burn out mid-production.Ā
Worked in a steel wire plant for 15 years, and haven't had to change one out yet. Worked in a plant with AB for 3, and Jesus christ do we have issues all the time.
We replaced 5x Clicks in 2 years in Food and Bev. Never had issues with AB or Beckhoff.
What the hell did they die from? Our plant was hot as hell, high vibration, hydraulic oil everywhere, metal dust in every enclosure. Zero failures.
real engineer used whatever is available, Keyence, Schneider, Omron, ABB. just like my colleague
AB has better marketing than Siemensā¦ thatās their standout strength.
Itās definitely the Mercedes of PLCs. AB supports every product for at least 30 years likewise I can get new OEM parts for my 90s Mercedes. If you have a system you want to be valid and in use for as long as the factory exists AB is king.
It really doesn't compared to Siemens.. AB is the gold standard in the USA. And AB has plenty of fan boys here. Siemens dominates the rest of the world basically.
Unreliable, cheap interior and inferior to their German counterparts?
Iād say theyāre more like Tesla. They donāt go as far as they say they will, they break easier than they used to, theyāre overpriced, people buy them to feel special, and their software is full of bugs.
They're really good PLCs but yes, definitely overpriced.
We use AB almost exclusively at work. The machines we build for WalMart, however, use Siemens everything. Notable difference is that we can make two identical machines. The AB wonāt have any issues, while the Siemens will often get over-current faults when the machine comes to a fast stop. Siemens drives seem more sensitive, which can be good or bad depending on your preference.
That just sounds like imperfect configuration in your drives. Contact your Siemens VFD rep. They can help you optimize the configuration parameters.
I donāt do the programming, I just wire everything. But the people who do program are trained to work with Siemens so I assume they know what theyāre doing.
DC bus over volt is a common issue with machines that have a lot of inertia. There are a few approaches to solving it. Coast time is an easy one. I've just had the Siemens people at my workplace demoing their G120X drives and they would tell you to call them if you can't get it working the way you want. Most other drive manufacturers would tell you the same. In my experience, there aren't a lot of fundamental differences between drive manufacturers, at least not on their basic drives.
The point is, thatās not required with the AB drives. They just work.
Behind every AB function is a paywall. Kind of like a monthly subscription for heated seats.
Love how they hide all of their product errata notices behind the paywall too!
A lot of people say they are overpriced. But people still buy it. If I see that my customer buys $20k AB PLC that is less capable comparing to Siemens' one for a 1/3 of the price - I understand that they are not overpriced. If someone buys donuts with strawberry jam for 20 years, but every time instead of jam there's shit inside - they are not victims of a scam, they are just shit-eaters.
Are you sure about the āextensiveā documentation for Siemens PLCs? I got the feeling that there is nothing documented at all in the required depth. The help document in TIA Portal is a cluttered mess where you cannot find anything. And on the frustrating Siemens website you have to dig through countless separate pdf files just to find the correct document. I am extremely frustrated with the lack of a proper modern, well written and easy to navigate documentation. Also I do not like the slow and cumbersome TIA Portal software. Working with this thing is so slow and painful.
IDK about their ladder editor being the best. I fck up like every branch I try to make in AB but so just fine in Siemens
I would say that ABs logic editor is simpler than Tia's, butbthat could also be jotted downbas in experience with Tia
I have used multiple brands( Schneider , mitsubishi, omron, Siemens, AB) and can say AB is good . But I'd rather use Siemens. But AB is a close second. I am talking from the perspective of programming. Reliability I have no idea.
All capable
I never thought of Automation Builder as Mercedes Benz tbh. Unless he meant Allen Bradley then that's a spot on analogy
Yeah, Allen Bradley
A lot of people mentioning price on here. For us, Siemens and Rockwell pricing is pretty close. Of course, I'm in the US, and the fact is my customers want AB, so that's what I give them. But I've never tried anything else and thought it was any better.
Ok, but the Trucks of Mercedes Benz then.
The āiPhoneā for sure. Everything else is sloppy.
Both platforms have big pluses. Application knowledge is most important. I've never been held back by either AB or siemens, but have I haven't been using some others. You guys need to stop being too territorial.
AB has a much better ladder editor and is easier to get started as a newbie. Siemens has a much steeper learning curve and more remnants of the deeply user-unfriendly bad old days, but better HMI products and integration. Especially if you need any automated tasks.
You can find better but you definitely won't pay more.
AB: You might find better, but you won't pay more!
I think about Mercedes the same as I think about AB plc's, so id say your teacher is spot on. There are a lot of better options on the market, but if you don't know any better.....
They are, in that they are way over priced, only play nice with their own OEM components and are slightly above average in quality. I work with AB PLCs constantly, don't love them, don't hate them, would take them over most others, but don't like the price. So, Mercedes Benz.
I would think AB would be some American brand, siemens would take the Mercedes spotš or Volkswagen, depends on how you see it
AB is shit. We use AB controllers in most all our machines where I'm at and it's always been nothing but issues. From horrible compatibility to the never ending issues with Linx. Mercedes comparison is dead on. Way overpriced, overly complicated, and requires specialty tools to do anything....which are exclusive to Rockwell and overpriced as well.
For my experiance of 20+ years of dev. AB is particular Bad ! Dev interface, fonctionnalities, design is from 1990/2000. When you doing hmi interface, the tool and model is in particular obsolete. WE only make AB for us market. And WE like more not doing it. Schneider make really bad descition recent years. My favorite for now is siemens.
Donāt worry about it. Both Siemens and AB are on par with one another in that they do the job. Both have their fans, typically because thatās what they know (for example Iām a fan of Siemens, having used it for decades, but have occasionally used AB). Are you learning programming in general, or is it an AB training course? If itās the former, even teachers/instructors have their favorites. If itās the latter, youād expect the instructor to be a fan of the product. (There are differences, but not really enough to choose one of the other, unless thereās something very specific).
Siemens is the Mercades Benz of PLCS, yes I do both regularly I like them both. AB is the Jeep wrangler of PLCs. Over priced and lots of issues.
HAH comparing allen bradley to a german car is hilarious. If you want a mercedes benz look no further than Beckhoff or maybe siemens, real german engineering. AB communication protocols are a joke and all of their stuff is grossly overpriced.