A long-standing question answered!

[JimRowell 1]

An innocent answer to a post (you can view it here:message) allowed me to find the following site: http://www.lighthouseplcs.com/plcs/shihlin.html The question in the original message thread was about Hitachi plc's. I've always wondered why there are Hitachi processors in the Mitsubishi pls's when Mitsubishi is a world leader in microprocessor development. At one time, not so long ago, Mitsubishi sold more per year than anyone else. I think they are still the leader in 8-bit sales and are somewhere around the top in 16-bit. Hitachi processors have always been known for their speed (but lack of high level features) and Miti's have always been rather slow (but feature rich). I figured it came down to them needing the speed for the plcs which are heavily burdened by the operating system (speed sells). Now I know better. It kind of looks like Mitsubishi doesn't make plcs. It appears they have been rebranding 'Lighthouse' plcs who have some kind of connection with Hitachi. Reliance, Furnace and a few others also use Lighthouse. Anyone here know anything about Lighthouse? Pricing, service, etc? Let's see... if Beijer did all of the original software, cables and some HMI's... and if Lighthouse makes most (all?) of the other hardware... Interesting. Jim Rowell Note (added 03/12/02): I should not have said "Lighthouse". It appears they are just a distributor. The manufacturer is a Taiwan company called Shihlin Electric. Edited 2 Dec 2003 by JimRowell

[Guest Guest_larry]

I thought that ShihLin made them under license from meau. It seems that the ShihLin products line is a subset of the meau line. That said, I use ShihLin for my export (non UL countries) work and they are identical to the meau except for the ink.

[Crossbow 295]

The whole SHIHLIN thing is easy to explain if you ask Mitsu. You can't do business in certain southeast Asian countries (like Taiwan) if you're a Japanese company. It has to do with the whole one hates the other scenario (China and Japan don't seem to like each other). Shihlin is Mitsubishi's incorporated name in Taiwan. The PLCs are the same as the Mitsubishi, they are just manufactured within Taiwan and it uses the localized brand name. This was told to me by a Mitsubishi employee. Edited 24 Oct 2004 by Crossbow

[larry818 0]

Funny, it was told to me by a ShihLin employee that they manufacture the plcs under license from meau.... Meau does tend to have product out about a year before the ShihLin versions are available. Next time I have a ShihLin on hand, I'll check the circuit boards...