tworst

Move to NJ series worth it?

37 posts in this topic

Ask the maintenace guys. They hate sysmac studio and symbolic addressing :burn:

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Yes - and even worse when they are thousands of ks away and on the phone! They hate FBs as well I find.

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We recently migrated to the NJ from CJ2H PLC's. 

Here are some advantages:

  • We got to a point of needing 16+ servo axes on our machines so it was cheaper to get one NJ vs. a CJ2H with two motion cards
  • We started to have a large number of EIP nodes and wanted to migrate some over to EtherCAT. Only the NJ controller can take on 3rd party EtherCAT devices.
  • We started to use the NX-S safety and distributed the safety I/O's over different panels. Previously we used the NE1A with the DeviceNet nodes which took up a lot of panel space.
  • All the software is in 'one place' inside Sysmac Studio. No more flipping through CX-Programmer, CX-Designer, and the Network Configurator.

Some disadvantages:

  • New software that everyone has to learn. Only a few of us have some knowledge of Sysmac Studio. Everyone here knows CX-Programmer. None of the maintenance guys have been trained or know Sysmac Studio. So expect a lot of calls.
  • No more number addressing which takes a long time to get used to.
  • You have to buy new software which isn't cheap.
Edited by kku

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I deal with maintenance personnel all the time, and I have not heard the same complaints from the ones I am dealing with.  The biggest complaint I hear is the file save format.

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8 hours ago, kku said:
  • All the software is in 'one place' inside Sysmac Studio. No more flipping through CX-Programmer, CX-Designer, and the Network Configurator.

Move this from advantages to disadvantages, as you are not able anymore to see both PLC and HMI projects simultaneously.

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4 hours ago, Crossbow said:

The biggest complaint I hear is the file save format.

This is very confusing. We haven't settled on the most solid way to do this. You can save the entire project but it's on 'that' specific computer in Omron's project format. Omron did show us where the files were but that takes some very specific steps to restore.

The Archive file is probably the easiest that contains everything. One problem here is, if either component (PLC or HMI) is recompiled then it may not match, even without any change.

We also backup to SD card (or file) as this contains a binary backup which we can do for the PLC and HMI separately. These are the ones I think I'm most comfortable with.

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1 hour ago, Sergei Troizky said:

Move this from advantages to disadvantages, as you are not able anymore to see both PLC and HMI projects simultaneously.

I agree. I almost replied when he posted that.

In most cases when I'm programming, I use two monitors. The PLC in one and the HMI in another. There are many other reasons to use two monitors but this is certainly one of my preferences.

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And Omron wonder why I will not use it! CJ2 is fine for me.

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Back to the original question.

There will be up front cost to purchase Sysmac Studio software and the NJ hardware costs a bit more than "comparable" CJ processors. 

Local I/O uses CJ modules.  Remote NX series I/O is pretty competitive price wise if you use remote I/O.  CJ series can use NX I/O using the Ethernet/IP coupler.

You did not indicate, but if you are doing motion on your machines, the NJ platform will make this much easier. 

As stated previously there will be a learning curve, instruction names are not the same, tag based programming, etc.

To get an idea of cost, you may want to take an existing project and work with your distributor to price the NJ hardware equivalent.  Just a thought.

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On 2/21/2017 at 9:19 AM, IO_Rack said:

I agree. I almost replied when he posted that.

In most cases when I'm programming, I use two monitors. The PLC in one and the HMI in another. There are many other reasons to use two monitors but this is certainly one of my preferences.

Well... if we're using NS of NB HMI, basically we still can use two monitors because we'll still using two softwares :D

For NA HMI is a bit tricky. I usually open two instance of Sysmac Studio, save a same project into two different files, then open both on each instance.
The first one is to edit the NJ, the second one is to edit the NA. For changes that I had made to the NJ project, I save it and doing an Offline Comparison on the NA project, to which the NJ inside the NA project will be updated with the changes.

Certainly it's not that flexible, but still a doable workaround

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I know that we have complained about this many times, so I hope Omron is watching and works to resolve it in a future release.  It's a pain not being able to have both devices open at the same time.

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We were mainly using CP and CJ plc's.

The NX1P2 is competitive in cost to even the CP family plc's. coming in 3 sizes(at the moment) , one with 24 io and no servo axes, one with 40 io and 2 servo axes, and one with 40 io and 4 servo axes.

Was told that a bare controller with no i/o onboard is also coming. should make for a very cost effective, small machine controller.

EtherCat and the NX io are a big +.

Would not go back.

 

 

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