C
A little while back I reviewed the Koyo Click PLC and I thought I’d follow up with the real world use I was picking a PLC for. Why? because this is the type of info that is really hard to find out about a product.
I just installed and commissioned a 30 or so conveyor project to move doors around without touching and do various loads unloads and traffic control. Most of them are in one circular line where the doors are fed in, inspected, hand sanded and then fed to a sanding machine. After one side has been sanded the doors are flipped and go around again.
I admit I was a little nervous doing a large project with 30 or so, $69.00 PLCs, but they certainly do everything you need for a conveyor line. And they are working pretty close to perfect and I am well pleased at the thousands of dollars saved. Most are just straight conveyors, but there are some special features.
The sander wants the thickness set to .1mm. So, the feeder conveyor has an analog Click and a pair of Banner Laser Gauges to measure the doors in real time. And one of the features wanted towards the end Is a touch screen in lieu of a box of buttons, done with a $450 CMore. ASCII or Modbus to the sander? No problem, the Click has the extra ports.
Once installed, the wish list grew and it became clear that adding all the wiring would take downtime we really can't spare. No problem, end to end control with Modbus RTU for the cost of the twisted pair wire and a little time. I did have to swap a few $69 PLCs for $99 PLCs with the RS485 port, but I'll certainly use the replaced units elsewhere. I like this Click.
Yes, it's just good old Modbus at 38.4k baud, but it's reliable and certainly fast enough for what conveyors do. And at the flipper we needed to tell which doors had to be flipped and which were done. This is done with a UV sensor and ordinary price stickers on a bottom corner. Sticker, and it gets flipped so the sticker is on the other side. No sticker and it's done.
With the network, new features are done in software and loaded during lunch or breaks. The Click is fantastic for this project and the cheap analog and networking would have been prohibitively expensive with many of the small PLCs whose first cost was many times more. I have one renegade ML1200 I want on the network and it will cost dearly, But that was the only gotcha in the whole project.. But other than that, it would be hard to do it better with any PLC and no hope of doing it for less. All the units are modular and can be reordered or repurposed plug and play the way the customer wanted.
At every turn, the capability was there with no extras needed. You guys can appreciate that. I am pleased.
Regards
cww
I just installed and commissioned a 30 or so conveyor project to move doors around without touching and do various loads unloads and traffic control. Most of them are in one circular line where the doors are fed in, inspected, hand sanded and then fed to a sanding machine. After one side has been sanded the doors are flipped and go around again.
I admit I was a little nervous doing a large project with 30 or so, $69.00 PLCs, but they certainly do everything you need for a conveyor line. And they are working pretty close to perfect and I am well pleased at the thousands of dollars saved. Most are just straight conveyors, but there are some special features.
The sander wants the thickness set to .1mm. So, the feeder conveyor has an analog Click and a pair of Banner Laser Gauges to measure the doors in real time. And one of the features wanted towards the end Is a touch screen in lieu of a box of buttons, done with a $450 CMore. ASCII or Modbus to the sander? No problem, the Click has the extra ports.
Once installed, the wish list grew and it became clear that adding all the wiring would take downtime we really can't spare. No problem, end to end control with Modbus RTU for the cost of the twisted pair wire and a little time. I did have to swap a few $69 PLCs for $99 PLCs with the RS485 port, but I'll certainly use the replaced units elsewhere. I like this Click.
Yes, it's just good old Modbus at 38.4k baud, but it's reliable and certainly fast enough for what conveyors do. And at the flipper we needed to tell which doors had to be flipped and which were done. This is done with a UV sensor and ordinary price stickers on a bottom corner. Sticker, and it gets flipped so the sticker is on the other side. No sticker and it's done.
With the network, new features are done in software and loaded during lunch or breaks. The Click is fantastic for this project and the cheap analog and networking would have been prohibitively expensive with many of the small PLCs whose first cost was many times more. I have one renegade ML1200 I want on the network and it will cost dearly, But that was the only gotcha in the whole project.. But other than that, it would be hard to do it better with any PLC and no hope of doing it for less. All the units are modular and can be reordered or repurposed plug and play the way the customer wanted.
At every turn, the capability was there with no extras needed. You guys can appreciate that. I am pleased.
Regards
cww