First off I know absolutely nothing about PLC's (Never played with one). But I do program building automation controllers all the time for my work (Trane mp581's, UPCM's, Niagara based stuff,etc..). I was recently tasked to troubleshoot a fairly new dish machine (1 1/2 years old?) for our dietary department and traced the problem down to two GE Fanuc Versamax PLC's. One was the master and the other was setup up for expansion (Kinda figured by the cable). Anyway for some reason all the outputs from the PLC just stopped working? Not sure if we had a power bump or what to cause it but nothing. This machine was of course out of warranty and we couldn't even get the part from the manufacture as they said it was discontinued (Glad we bought it). As a result we had to next day air order another NOS PLC combo pre-programmed from a surplus supplier which was not cheap at $2k. Considering it was costing us $500 a day while this machine was down we had to do it. But since I do not know how or why this happened i'm sure it will again and we may not be able to get another pre-programmed PLC. Which brings me to my questions. What is needed software/Hardware wise to pull the programming off of the new PLC? And can I dump that to a new PLC (Clone it)? I have read that "proficy machine" might be needed but so far having a hell of a time finding out where to buy it let alone download. Is there other software that can program it (Click or something)? Ultimately I would love to just look at the logic and sequence of operation and in the future just replace it with a controller tied in to my building automation that i'm more familiar with (Which I was going to do) but it would be a pain to start from scratch with not a clear idea of the operation (Plus they would be down while I had to figure it out).
Thanks.
