My company has been using AB Micrologix 1400 PLC's for about 8-10 years. These PLC have been great but they are pricey and they don't support advanced coding techniques - they only do ladder logic. We are interested in going to something that allows tag based variables, structured text, function blocks, etc. To this end, our search is leading us to look at at the Mitsubishi FX5U.
To frame this up, we don't do anything too fancy, basically we have some sensor input and we use that to open and close some process valves. We don't do any motion control, high frequency counting, PID, SCADA, etc. Basically, we use the PLC as a fancy automated on/off controller.
I am nervous to switch to Mitsubishi mainly because Mitsubishi is an unknown to me. I don't have a feel for their quality, support, rampant bugs, etc. AB has been very well supported and is a very stable platform. However, jumping up to the AB RS5000 series to get the desired functionality of different programming techniques is way out of our budget. Can anyone who is familiar with Mitsubishi shed some light on Mitsubishi's quality, support and stability? Are their products pretty good? Any thought on the FX5U PLC? Are there many horror stories related to Mitsubishi? Am I being a sucker to AB's marketing team by being this nervous?
I appreciate any help! Thanks!
