Selecting a PLC - General PLC Knowledge - Part 3 from AutomationDirect

okay how to select the plc for your application this is part three so welcome to automationDirect media again let's go ahead and get rolling we'll give you the examples well show you some differences with our PLC's the i/o stuff I'll even show you on our web page where you can find stuff and we'll give you some a little bit of resource information direct object plc is they all program with direct soft we just released our directsoft5 not too long ago or you can use a handheld programmer okay all have removable IO terminals even our brick units have little removable i/o terminals as you can see here so let's just say that you accidentally zapped a PLC or over time your PLC wore out you need to replace it you don't have to rewire the whole thing pop the terminal block loose pop a new PLC in put the terminal block on it you're ready to go just make sure you power down okay also the same thing with the modular units you can pop any of these terminal blocks off and replace the modular units the dl05 is our smallest brick at this time this is considered a nano class it starts out at $99 keep in mind this is as of April of 2006 so prices may change later but the o-5 starts in 99 you have 14 I oh that is built-in you have one slot that is available so you can have up to thirty i/o total it's pretty good for a $99 PLC you have two communications ports on this PLC so you can actually network through those two communications ports that are on top for PID loops built-in and those option modules that goes in this option slot right here there's 24 available option modules may be more to come later there's a variety of ACDC and relay i/o DCI of modules models that do have the built-in high-speed functions like we're talking about earlier if you need high-speed counting you'll buy a DC input you can put a encoder on the first couple of inputs here and set it up for high speed and you can actually read counts extremely small screen and compact you could fit this in the palm of your hand micro BRIC class here we've got the deal 105 it's great little units been around for a little while has 18 i/o so it's a couple more than oh five has a built-in auxilary 24 volt DC power supply believe this is about 1.2 maybe 1.5 if they've bumped it up I believe it's 1.2 amp 24 volt DC power spot so you can't run a whole heck of a lot of it off of it but you can run some sensors and switches and stuff like that so a lot of customers love this but keep in mind it's not very powerful DC power supply 91 instructions you have one communications port and this is the only downside to the 105 so if you have to use some type of operator interface or HMI when you go to set up and debug everything you're gonna have to flip back and forth between your HMI and your software trying to debug whereas if you went to a five or let's say at oh six you can communicate will say this port right here to your computer and look at your ladder logic and you could put your HMI on the second port here as long as it's available and you could look at your ladder and troubleshoot it and the HMI at the same time so keep that in mind if you're trying to find ease and troubleshooting to communications ports work a lot better back to the 105 have a variety of ACDC and relay i/o and then the course the same goes for this the DC i/o modules have the high-speed built-in functions the o6 same way the DC i/o have the high speed you have same thing variety of AC DC and relay two serial ports on it so you can do several things with this second port 23 available option modules and the same option modules fit in the O six also fit in the dl05 you can have up to 100 total io and it has eight PID loops so it's pretty good 199 bucks for all this thirty-six iOS is built-in and you have like I said you have for expandable slots there so let's just talk about the micro brick and the Nano the brick classes you can buy say DC inputs and relay outputs well if you got DC inputs and relay outputs that's it unless you have some options lots you can't ever use any other voltages or anything else like that say I buy DC inputs and relay outputs and I need some AC well if you have some expansion slot you can buy some AC cards if you're on a 105 you don't have any expansion you can't add anything like that later so whatever voltage you go with you've got to stick with that okay the directlogic micromodular class this is our 205 205 will probably fall in a couple of different classes but you have anywhere from a three to a nine slot chassis and up to 256 i/o in the first base or the CPU base and up to twelve hundred and eighty i/o when you go to the local expansion 16 PID loops over two hundred and thirty instructions we have four CPUs we've have a 230 which is pretty much a bottom line but it's a very cost competitive a 240 has two communications ports and some more instructions 250 actually it's a 250 - one have two communications ports you have PID the bottom communications port can be used like you can see that it'll look like this this bottom communications port can be used for networking you can talk to HMI or you can do remote i/o right off of this port so you could slave out to some other racks and then of course the 260 is going to look just like the 250 but it'll have more functions more memory and it'll have a couple more instructions okay Ethernet and serial you'll remote i/o like I said you could use this for serial remote i/o you could buy modulus I don't on the rack and be used for Siri remote i/o or you can buy an Ethernet card that would look sort of like this and it'd be called an h2 - erm and it'd be ethernet remote master and you'd go out to other 205 racks other 405 racks or terminator our blue stuff and you could master any of those racks - available high-speed modules which is the CTR IO and the CTR int these are both high speed counters additional serial and Ethernet communication modules like I said there's an Ethernet one here we have other serial ones and then you have the coat processors okay our larger class 305 and 405's well 305 a little bit of a warning on a 305 I would not suggest using a 305 for a new system the 205 is probably the best one if you need a really large system then bump up to the 405 but completely skip the 305 a lot of customers are like well I don't need a 205 405 sort of overkill I'll go with the middle of the line 305 well unfortunately it's been around for 21 years it's a great PLC works great you can't kill them really but I wouldn't suggest it for a new PLC system because it's sort of older technology a little bit harder too difficult to understand the program then what some of our newer PLC's are like the 305 you can find these they're great for replacements you find a lot of them in elevators and car washes but the 305 hit the market you might actually see some yellow ones here and there there's a Coast tag they're actually made by Koyo you see some that have GES name on them that's its Series one you see some that have Siemens and Texas Instruments names on them as well so they were all marketed with other companies there's always been made by Koyo still are make by call you you can get some newer processors for it like the 350 here it's almost essentially a 250 processor in the 305 rag but things are a little bit different if you notice power supply in the processor on the right hand side and everything works to the left whereas any other PLC's we have to start on the left hand side and work to the right do you have a couple of CPUs he has available specialty CPUs Heskey basic and some multi multiple serial ports and also programming some of these some of the older units with the older processors you could not use software at all you actually had to use a handheld you were limited to just the handheld programmer 405's well get into the large systems this is our largest at this point in time deal 405 you have three CPUs you see all the memory we can have up to thirty-five hundred and eighty-four i/o ninety-five PID loops we offer these little PID cards made by fax engineering they will fit out in the rack so with those and the built-in PID that's on a 450 you can have up to 95 loops local expansion you just plug right onto the ends of the 405 rack and you can add another 405 rack just add the little d4 - eex or expansion module on the next racks four six and eight slot basis high-density you got 32 and 64 point IO modules back up a second the 205 has 32 point IO modules as well you can see this one right here this is a 32 point module it's a little hard to see but basically you come off of this module what's with what's called a zip link or a little cable and it comes into a breakout connector and you wire everything to that breakout connector because it would be pretty tough to get 32 plus wires into here and the 64 point modules can be no way to get 64 wires in there Ethernet and serial remote i/o - high speed counter modules and 12 available specialty modules and five communications and network modules so you get into some of the higher communication stuff get some better modules field I own what's the field i oh okay I won't talk about field IO for a second terminator i/o is our little blue stuff everybody loves the color well these are slaves they're called dumb i/o you can also use 205 and 405's field i/o or dumb i/o and what this means is you're going to use some other PLC let's just say for instance we're going to use a 205 PLC to control other 205's 405's and terminators and you can mix all this too so we're gonna have a master rack and all these are going to be our slaves terminator i/o the advantage to using it you have several different slave communications modules you don't have to use another PLC you can use other stuff to control it that has hot-swappable modules so as you can see here you can pop the little latch on top pull the module out all your wires are still connected here triple stack terminal blocks so all your terminals here you've got a lot of room you don't have to use any type of little connectors or connectors for wiring little terminal blocks everything's built in here so a lot of guys love these back playing expansions so let's just say that I'm tapping onto the sides here it's not really a rack you just keep snapping on to the sides well let's just say I run out of room in my enclosure I need more IO well I just pop a cable on one side or the other go to the next rack or go to the next level and keep popping some more racks well what happens if I run out of power you have a power budget on your PLC's okay if you run out of power you just take this nice little power supply buy another one add it on the end and you keep adding modules no problems 2:05 hardware you can use it as slave io4 profibus device net Ethernet the coil remote and the ethernet remote i/o stuff 405 use the ethernet remote i/o coil remote i/o and we have some other 405 stuff that you can use for remote i/o as well okay an example here is a good example customer knows they need 16 DC inputs 12 AC inputs 8 relay outputs and a 32 GC out and you need floating point math well we all know you can't get that many i/o and one of the brick units so the first available plc option would be to use a 205 well we need floating-point maths or we have to use a 250 or 260 CPUs we get the 250 you've got your input cards and you've got your two output cards now let's look at these inputs 16 means you have 16 points or 16 inputs the N stands for input the d stands for DC so 16 inputs and their DC okay 16 na inputs a stands for AC output cards T stands for out and the RS for relay T stands for out and the D stands for DC module and a lot of times we had these little numbers on the end being that we've had several different versions of this card 32 this is a 32 means this is a high density card here anytime you're using high density cards like I said you're gonna have to use a zip link and you'll use like a little breakout connector there's going to be tons of examples there's gonna be a lot of questions if you notice we didn't say anything about what size rag that I'm gonna need what type of power supply you've got a couple of different options on your power supplies to put all these modules in the processor in you know it's gonna be well you need at least a you know a six point rack or a six slotted rack to put all this in well if you need something later on you might want to go ahead and buy nine slot rack you can put some fill modules the d2 - fi ll and basically that's just a little cover of modules that go over your empty slots another that falls in shorts anything out makes it look all nice and clean you know maybe you don't have room for so you just go with a six slot rack okay before we get to the references go ahead and let's go to our website and let's go back and basically what I did is I went through our PLC products from the homepage and as you can see here we'll break this down into all the PLC family so 506 105 205 305 four or five and then we get into things like I discussed the ziplink cables and connectors and then you get into some other software's and stuff like that but you can see we break all of these down into different types of i/o modules that you can buy forum communications programming software cables and stuff like that so go to our website take a look at all this information if you need some help you can always go to the tech support side if I can get that in the window and you can drop down here and the technical support side go to a customer forum ask questions our technical support guys will answer questions and outside people will answer your questions we got a lot of smart guys that been in the field for a long time they love to answer these questions so you always do that you can go down here and go to seminars gratitute Orioles example programs anytime we have a use for a lot of example programs we'll put them out here on the tech support side so you can also just contact our tech support and say hey I need some help you know what can you help me out with feel free to give our guys a call at our technical support they'll walk you through what PLC's are gonna work best for your system training you need any training stuff like that we'll talk about that here so just keep in mind you can always good automationdirect.com find any information about selecting the PLC we're supposed to have what's called a machine builder integrated into our website for long so take a look at that that'll help you out PLC's dotnet this is a PLC website that we're not really associated with it's just one that we've always used and found very useful for PLC knowledge and they have some forums on there you can ask and discuss all kinds of good stuff about other PLC's other brand PLC's and stuff and then we have a support page here that has some training PDFs like I said basically this is going to be a list of self-study tools videos books publications our technical support you can call these guys up here's a phone number back to the training stuff Doug Bell at interconnecting automation holds classes for PLC training so if you're just getting into it need some help with programming feel free to give him a call that you found that information on our website he also sells videos DVDs and he also has what's called a trainer PLC it's a little dll file that's in a enclosure has some push buttons and lights and stuff like that and it comes with a training video that you can watch and learn so you can program it and understand how to use a PLC a little bit better so I hope that you didn't find some use out of this video and I said this is a how to choose the correct PLC for your application so uh thanks have a great day