B&R Automation Opinions Needed

[ZedIDave 0]

I need thoughts and opinions on the B&R plc. The X20 product line is the one main one we are looking at. The items I like so far are : 1) Cost of components is low 2) Remote I/O cost appears to be low and easy to configure both hardware and in the ladder. 3) Software appears to be easy to use once you learn the environment. The Help files appear to be better then some of the other plc mfg's. When you select an instruction or hardware component and press F1, the help for the particular item pops up without having to search. (New version 3.0) All the other brands, AB, GE, Omron, Mitsubishi had either higher costs on parts or the software was not as straight forward and time to create, de-bug and support needs to be considered. I have been around PLC's for 20 years and have not worked on a B&R. So any insight would be very helpful. Thanks

[JesperMP 2]

Hello ZedIDave I havent tried the X20 series, but have given the 2003 series a go. As for the programming software (Automation Studio), I definitely didnt't enjoy the time I had to spend with it. Have they added a useable X-ref yet ? I prefer to program in Ladder, and Automation Studios Ladder editor was (is ?) horrible. ST and SFC were so-so. As far as I understand, B&R's big selling point these days is motion control. If you dont use this feature, I dont see much speaking for B&R. As for networking, I think they are heading down a path (Ethernet Powerlink) shared by not many others.

[Beerad 0]

I just did 4 months of training on their systems. Automation Studio 3.0.90 made everything a breeze, I hear 4.0 is coming out later this year. Ladder functionality worked fine for me, although i did hear of some other people in my class that ran into glitchy issues. IMO you can't really design good software in ladder anyway, so i don't see any loss there. Cross-referencing worked perfectly for me when debugging code. I think the best part about doing the software in AS is that its hardware independant, so the same code will run on any of their PLCs. No more problems like when switching from SLC to 5000

[donbinno 1]

IFP Automation since you have done a four month training on their system can you actually explain me how modbus tcp works in order to link an B&R plc and pc please? what do those registers stand for? Coil? Discrete Input? Input Register? Holding Register? thanks

[Chris Elston 78]

I had a Sales Person today tell me that B&R PLC own 30% of the market in the USA and will over take Allen Bradley. Can anyone confirm this? Why haven't I seen very many in the field then?

[panic mode 246]

that made me smile, sounds a lot like "you can't write a good story using typewriter"

[Ken Moore 23]

In my world B&R is not a factor, never seen one. My customers use mostly Siemens, Allen-Bradley aka Rockwell, and a few TI/Siemens 505 systems. However, we mostly work with the Oil/chemicals industry so machine builders may have used this brand.

[sneakpeak29 0]

Good day! We were using ehterenet cable to connect to X20cp0292 to a win8 laptop. We encountered a problem with detecting the IP Address but esolved it using winxp. But we still can't make it to online status. Has anyone encountered this problem? Note: We are using Automation studios 4.0. Hoping for your reply. Thank you very much! :)

[drforsythe 15]

I have seen the B&R stuff in use mostly on molding machines. We have two major brands of injection molders in our company and both use the B&R platform. We are not able to view code, so I cannot speak about the programming environment, but the hardware has seemed pretty solid. I also liked the statement "IMO you can't really design good software in ladder anyway". It made me chuckle.

[CapinWinky 2]

I've been working with B&R for several years and have nothing but good things to say about them. I recently changed jobs and now work mostly with Rockwell and Elau/Schneider PacDrive3 and frankly, I miss B&R because their platform is so much more capable than Rockwell and has a better programming environment than Schneider. Automation Studio (I'll shorten to AS) 3.X is a HUGE step up from AS2.X and AS 4.0 has introduced more improvements. I actually copy and past ST code from RSLogix/Studio 5000 and EPAS/SoMotion into an evaluation copy of AS to work on them and then past them back into where I need it because the AS editors are so much better. If you worked with B&R before 2008, you should check them out again.AS covers programming everything, no need for separate HMI, drive, commissioning, or simulation software and the AS does the entire product line, (so much better than Rockwell's dozens of separate programs/license). Programming the SafePLC does use a 3rd party editor (I'm sure for liability reasons), but it is integrated into AS. Unlike most, AS works easily with standard version control (Subversion, Git, etc) and allows multiple people to download different parts of a project to the same PLC. It really is the best) IDE of any PLC platform by a very wide margin.They are #4 or #5 world wide for PLC sales (behind Rockwell, Siemens, and Mitsubishi) and most likely past Mitsubishi for servo control sales, maybe even past Siemens. World wide, they passed Omron in total sales a few years back. You don't see the B&R name on a lot of equipment because they make it very easy to re-brand to the OEM's company name. In the US market, they frequently end up on systems with a do-nothing MicroLogix thrown in to make end users feel better since so many places spec AB because AB programmers are a dime a dozen in the US.They're an advanced platform; that makes the learning curve steeper, but there is nothing they can't do. You don't tend to see B&R on really simple machines, even though they can be cost competitive at the low end; I think the reason is OEMs making simple machines don't want to spend money on training and Automation Direct or ProFace is more geared toward the low end, no-training-needed market.Their advanced camming and servo control in general is just flat out amazing. Their only weakness has been robot control, though they've been able to do it for many years, they kept it all pretty much in house. Now they are starting to make standard robot geometries available (a lot like Elau) for easier, wide spread use (probably because they snagged so many Elau guys when Schneider bought them).I haven't done anything with their CNC capabilities, but I hear they just overhauled that and it is very capable.Their Visual Component HMI editor (built into AS) is really good in some respects, but bad in others. They had plans to move to web based HMI, which would be a huge step up and a big advantage over the competition. However, I fear that will make their learning curve even steeper.Honestly, I no longer have any connection to B&R and don't even use their products anymore, but I want them to succeed because they are, hands down, the best product on the market at a really great price point and a good company filled with good people The better they do, the more likely I am to get to work with them in the future. What's extra frustrating is I'm using the PacDrive3 platform because my company is locked in with Schneider, and all the IO is made by B&R but programmed in Schneider's inferior software package! There are already comments about ladder; I think B&R's early mindset was that ladder was dying out as new engineers (already familiar with text based programming) entered the workforce and machines got complicated enough that you didn't want just anyone poking around in the code. This has been largely true at advanced OEMs, but B&R quickly realized that the US automation industry is slow to change and low-end OEMs buy a lot of PLCs. B&R's first cracks at a ladder editor were barely usable because they just didn't expect people to really use them that much. Now, their ladder editor is very good, comparable with other big brands, but their ST editor is world class and should be the model that all other brands steal from. I could talk all day about how bad ladder is for the industry and the terrible ST implementation of Rockwell is the biggest blockage the death of ladder, but I'll save that for another post.

[gear-bored 0]

One word of caution, these B&R PLCs have been around at least since the mid 90's. I have one here that was originally programmed in 96 using PG2000 software. I had to contact B&R USA and send them a copy of the program to find out which software was needed to interact with it. It was originally a DOS software package and takes some work to run on an XP machine. It was also programmed in German....we got it going, but it was a challenge. etui samsung galaxy A7 gel housse samsung galaxy A7 pas cher Edited 3 Feb 2015 by gear-bored