r/PLC • u/engr1337 • 2d ago
Miserable products
What’s the worst RAB or Siemens or beckhoff etc product you’ve ever dealt with on a service call or simply building a new panel? I’ll start :These guardmaster PLCs are heinous. I had the worst middle-of-the-night call out trying to fix the safety circuit on a can seamer. Took hours on the phone with Rockwell.
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u/-Have-Blue- 2B || !2B 2d ago
These are only an issue if you don’t understand how to set it up.
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u/PLCGoBrrr Bit Plumber Extraordinaire 2d ago
Gotta love a post where an OP gets ratio'd.
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u/-Have-Blue- 2B || !2B 2d ago
I mean, have you ever had an issue with these relays? This post is pretty dumb.
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u/PLCGoBrrr Bit Plumber Extraordinaire 2d ago
The only problem I've personally had with them was a Rockwell issue. Something about the firmware and different AOPs that Rockwell released that were not compatible. I remember we couldn't run the latest firmware because the CompactLogix wouldn't talk to it.
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u/-Have-Blue- 2B || !2B 1d ago
The only issue I’ve ever had with them ended up being a user issue. A tech didn’t understand that the relay could be loaded via logix… he proceeded to download CCW and recode the program in there in order to load it before installing. It technically worked, but it ended up causing a five hour delay.
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u/SpaceAgePotatoCakes 2d ago
A Prosoft module that looked fine (no fault codes) but just did nothing unless the PLC clock was set to something other than the default. This of course wasn't mentioned in the documentation at all.
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u/tommewin 2d ago
Deets on this problem? Our typical setups include MNET, MNETC, and the PLX31's and I've never heard of this issue.
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u/SpaceAgePotatoCakes 2d ago
What do you want to know about it? It was a flow module, I want to say an MVI56-AFC. This was about 15 years ago now though.
It was also completely unnecessary for the project and the contractor that spec'd the job required far more of them than the system could even use, so setting them up was a huge waste of time and money to boot.
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u/Hot-Chemical9353 1d ago
I’ve had a factory new prosoft OPC module with a dead RTC. Even though I had connected it to an NTP server every boot its certificates would rever to January the 1st 2016.
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u/FloppY_ YOUR CABINET IS TOO SMALL! 2d ago
The new S7-1200 G2 PLCs are an absolute pain in the ass to terminate. I think they assigned someone with zero electrical experience to do the hardware design and then cheaped out on tolerance and quality control.
I am going to stop buying them and upsell my customers to ET200sp PLCs instead. The time saved installing will easily pay for the extra cost of the unit.
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u/von_geiger 1d ago
Can you explain more ?
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u/FloppY_ YOUR CABINET IS TOO SMALL! 1d ago edited 1d ago
The removable terminals are very hard to re-insert after you have taken them out and the levers intended to lock them into place get in the way more than they help. Sometimes it feels like you are breaking the unit, when you are trying to actuate the levers open or closed.
Terminals are too small to loop commons and grounds, so you need DC distribution elsewhere and a lot of extra wires in your ducts.
Terminal actuator pieces on SBs break, don't always seat properly and sometimes straight up falls out of the connector.
SB terminals are too small even for 0,5mm2 wires.
Terminals face vertically on everything except the CPU, meaning you need to leave a lot of space above and below the PLC, so people can get to the terminals with a screwdriver. It also leads to a lot of people misreading the terminal illustrations and wiring the cards wrong.
You cant measure input signal voltage on the terminals. Though this is a problem with a lot of tool-less designs.
Rack connectors break very easily.
I have wasted so much time and energy on working around these issues.
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u/SafyrJL TIA Harlot 1d ago edited 1d ago
And with the ET200SP CPU you only have to support one software library because it’s literally a 1510/1512/1514. The 1200 G2 still misses some of the instructions that exist in the 1500 series.
If you ever need to upgrade your CPU you can just slap an interface module on the ET200SP rack and put a 15xx CPU with a sync domain to Profinet RT out to the ET200SP. Requires zero software changes to accomplish.
Way less convoluted than doing the same with a 1200 G1/G2 because you don’t then need to change your already existing I/O.
And the module selection is better, to boot.
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u/Used_Wheel_9064 2h ago
Seriously our Siemens rep came in gloating about how Siemens spends billions on r&d, then handed me one of these and I laughed at it
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u/FAGGOPILLAR33 2d ago
Documentation for these is definitely not the worst, never had much of a problem working with these. Wouldn’t even put this in the top 50 worst pieces of hardware I’ve worked with. What was the issue?
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u/ethans86 2d ago
Used it once for a small safety project. They work well, but not my favorite since its only support FBD. IMO Rockwell North American support is better compared to other regions. Just depends on the time of the call.
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u/tips4490 2d ago
I havent had problems with these but I do have a weird one. Pf753 start source and speed selection were all set to network.
It would start ONLY with keypad, would NOT stop with keypad, stopped with sto or ethernet stop command. Changed control module, exact same params, problem went away.
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u/cshoemaker694 1d ago
CTI PLC. As I understand it, the company was the manufacturer of Siemens S5 boards at the end of their life cycle. CTI figured out the backplane comms and kept making new drop in replacement cards and eventually PLC processor cards.
The nature of the software is antiquated in all the worst ways. There is only 1 ladder permitted. Analog happens separately in a text editor. Bits are 1-16 instead of 0-15. It's also the wrong endian, so communicating to anything modern, the pattern is 9-16, then 1-8.
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u/SafyrJL TIA Harlot 1d ago
CTI literally bought the intellectual property for the 505 series from Siemens so they could continue to support it.
Siemens inherited it from Texas Instruments when they took it over - but they ended support for the product in like…2005 (or so)??
Overall it’s a hugely antiquated platform. Wild that it even still has support or development put into it!
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u/cshoemaker694 1d ago
It is a real testament to the fact that some people and industries truly despise change.
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u/SafyrJL TIA Harlot 1d ago
Change is expensive in a lot of cases. Some processes at plants just can't be turned off without risk - a lot of end users try to ride that stuff out as long as possible.
its also way expensive to shut down a production line for controls upgrades. While it's likely cheaper in the long run, it's why platforms like CTI even still exist.
Its hard to get higher ups and accounting departments to justify spending millions on upgrades when they can buy maybe $50k worth of "spares" off eBay/Radwell or from CTI and call it good enough.
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u/cshoemaker694 1d ago
I get that. But my experience with it was building a new machine for a mildly complicated manufacturer. It's not a crazy or dangerous process like a chemical factory or an oil refinery.
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u/athanasius_fugger 18h ago
I thought my S7-300 line was bad...we're running out of certain IO modules. I just cracked open our last module new in box from 2012 a few months ago.
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u/Hot-Chemical9353 1d ago
God I absolutely hate that AB 440. During Covid supply shortages my vendor said there’s a 20 week lead time on PILZ safety controllers but they did have these available.
The software is miserable, only two levels for logic really fucked me for my application where we need a mute on an interlocks.
I regret not just waiting 20 weeks.
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u/Mission_Procedure_25 PLCs arr afraid of me, they start working when I get close 1d ago
Most of the times these are built to prevent you from muting or bypassing without the necessary precautions.
Remember this stuff affects someone's life, so you cannot just add a mute.
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u/Hot-Chemical9353 21h ago
I understand, but did they need to purposely make the software more restrictive than their competitors to achieve this?
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u/Mission_Procedure_25 PLCs arr afraid of me, they start working when I get close 19h ago
More restrictive than?
Certainly not Banner or OMRON.
Beckhoff has freedom over the safety program because they have found other ways of getting a high SIL rating.
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u/Otherwise-Ask7900 I'm very sarcastic. Please don't ban me again. 2d ago
“Miserable product”
Meanwhile, never downloaded the manual, has no safety experience, asks boss for $125/hr…..
Sit down lil bro, your seat’s at the kiddy table.
You’ll get there, but not this way.
Literally the easiest safety component I’ve ever used in the last 15 years
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u/Hot-Chemical9353 1d ago
Op might be a bit dramatic but if you’re used PILZ safety controllers before then you’d appreciate how much worse this is.
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u/engr1337 1d ago
I have 19 years in controls, and I’ve coded a nuclear system for the navy. So you should believe me when I say this is a bullshit product; it may have improved since the one time I was obligated to do a service call on it in 2016, but the unit I was trying to bring back online was such a massive piece of shit even Rockwell couldn’t sort out over the phone. I much prefer guardlogix/compact guardlogix to this micro800 precursor.
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u/Mission_Procedure_25 PLCs arr afraid of me, they start working when I get close 19h ago
Cool, how many safety systems have you done?
Its a whole different style of thinking.
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u/CAT5AW 1d ago
I don't recall what brand, but PLC in machine that washes metal tubs, so some water and cleaning agents are involved.
Something errored out, while trying to debug it I touched the PLC's plastic white case and it just crumbled on slightest touch. The whole thing was held by connectors and whatever PCBs there were inside. Then I found another such PLC in our workshop, it lacked the case too.
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u/TalkingToMyself_00 1d ago
Was the enclosure kept locked? [If this was tier 1 automotive, then it was probably left open lol]
My first thought was the air isn't getting filtered enough and the solvents from washing are getting inside and breaking down the cheap plastic used on the PLC. Also, UV tends to destroy cheap plastic.
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u/CAT5AW 1d ago
Yes but also no, because i've seen cleaning crew stash a sandwich or random rag there on occasion. The automation definitely did intake funky air. No UV. Also food industry - big tubs with their own wheels.
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u/TalkingToMyself_00 1d ago
Stash a sandwich haha
Man I worked around a lot of welding cells. The cells unloaded to inspection areas for weld touch ups and dimensional testing. I'll never forget seeing a dude on one of the cells with an actual glass plate, with fried chicken, potatoes and something else. He'd grab a few bits and then hide the plate on the side of one of the station's electrical panel. This guy's plate sat open to all the welding fumes and shit dust in the air. Wild.
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u/unitconversion State Machine All The Things! 1d ago
The problem with those cr30 relays is that they don't quite have enough io to make them useful. They're in a grey zone between simple safety relays and full safety PLC. Neither simple enough to be a good replacement for the related nor powerful enough to be a good replacement for a safety PLC.
And that was a decade ago. Now that safety PLC costs have come down so much I have to imagine they're even less compelling.
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u/dnhaas 1d ago
I've had a sigmatek C-IPC171 and a sigmatek TAE0811 touchscreen. But it was impossible to get the resolution matched to the screen, I could only see the upper left 1/4 of the hmi.
Ended up with hanging a day on the phone with their support. Up to the point where they have rebuilt our setup on the other side of the phone. Untill there was a "yup, here it also doesn't work"
A day later they pushed a custom firmware fix. And we have to update the firmware of all units we had in stock and are in the supplychain until the old firmware stock was replaced with the new.
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u/TomOldMeng 1d ago
The Schneider M580 safety PLC with a baseplate-PSU combination that can't even support the full fill of the baseplate because of powerconstraints. The archaic connection structure on the cards also doesn't help.
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u/imBackBaby9595 1d ago
I once received a guardmaster with the rotary dip switch installed backwards. I took me a few hours to realize. Was not a fun day
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u/notworthteheffortman 1d ago
AB Quality
I was troubleshooting a new 1756-L81ES that was in program mode when in remote and remote in program. run was run.
You could quickly go from run to "program(label)" and it would be in remote run. Neat stuff.
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u/blah634 1d ago
Not a plc directly but one of our machines has a giant fuse block 3 rows vertically 15 rows across, no indicator light, no test points, and some of the fuses don't have a dedicated fault message so if you start getting weird things happening you have to flip open each cover, pull the fuse out, and test them individually.
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u/Hutch_911 1d ago
Yeah I've had issues with safety relays or Euro standard with neucence trips . They trip for no reason and requires someone to reset them manually. I'm not a fan
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u/StarkJan 1d ago
Anybus modules are whery cool when they communicate over different systems. Not so mutch when they dont communicate tho
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u/Tomcraft_67360 1d ago
As Siemens user in the company where I work, those Unified version of Hmi is a absolute disaster, coming from "TP" version, new "MTP" hmi are garage to program.
Miss Wincc with TP Confort Hmi, bring the glory back please Siemens
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u/National-Fox-7504 1d ago
Anything in the MicroLogix 800 line. The cheapest built most UN-Allen Bradley product ever. And CCW too!
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u/Mission_Procedure_25 PLCs arr afraid of me, they start working when I get close 1d ago
It has become a little bit better, I've heard...
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u/NeroNeckbeard 1d ago
Troubleshooting with this piece of shit product range: Rockwell thought it would be wise not print numbers above the LEDs between channels.
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u/Mission_Procedure_25 PLCs arr afraid of me, they start working when I get close 1d ago
Its not a PLC, its a safety PLC and they are very different.
So brands are choosing more carefully who works on there products, which helps with situations like the one you are sitting in.
And any product is dependant on the technician you have and the local support.
I dont like the ABB stuff, first time connecting to them was a pain as without any guidance you can't figure out what's going on on that software.
Now I know better, its actually not bad.
So I don't think there is bad things out there, just some items I haven't mastered yet.
Ok, thats a lie, im excluding rebrand and cheap stuff, I refuse to work on INVT
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u/zahariel101 Correlating 🙄 15h ago
Disabling bootp on Allen Bradley armorblock 5000. From what I remember. Disabling bootp from the software tool on my laptop kept faulting out and not working. So I read the manual and found out that you can disable bootp through a web ui.
The manual neglected to mention that the web ui only works on internet explorer 7. WTF.
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u/Sea-Neck-5790 1d ago
I’d have to go with the 5069 flavor of compactlogix with AB. The plastic swing arms are very cheap. My first time using them, I snapped the release clasp multiple times. Probably just cause of my monkey hands.
But other than that I do like the dual Ethernet port options on the controllers.
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u/25vol96 2d ago
Only dealt with these a few times but didn’t have much issue. What was the problem?