Macro Burned by the Micro 850

[BobLfoot 301]

I'll try and keep this neutral and not degenerate into a rant, but my recent experiences with the AB Micro 850 have been less than heart-warming and encouraging.  We recently purchased a production line for my place of employment from a trio of OEM Equipment builders.  All were supposed to use AB ControlLogix or CompactLogix PLCs.  However, two of the vendors called purchasing and said "let us save you some money, by using the Micro-850 PLC Rockwell's latest and greatest offering".  And our purchasing bought it.  So this week we brought in a Rockwell Premier System Integrator to add 9300-ENA units to these machine so we could collect SCADA Data from them. Now in full disclosure these were CCW version 6 not the latest and greatest 9.1,  So we came to machine 1 a micro 850 and uploaded, saved a copy for safety, then changed the Gateway  from blank to the NAT device IP and downloaded.  Machines on our SCADA Net could now see the Micro 850, but the machine it was in wouldn't start or communicate with the Component Panelview.  Turns out that thing was in remote and came up in program.  Chose run and all appears well.  Go on and do machine 2 another Micro - 850 and it went equally flawlessly.  Our downtime window was up so we started making product.  Only one problem the previous maximum speed was unattainable.  As a matter of fact several configured variables were at their Initial Factory State rather than the state they were when we shut down.  SO HERE COMES BURN NUMBER ONE.  Upload and Save only gets the logic not the variables or the values.  You must export the Controller and each programs variables to a separate excel file to have them around to restore.  That means 1 upload and 15 exports per machine backup and no word of this "FEATURE" in the tech database.  Now today we got a window to do the third machine also a Micro-850. This time we went to program and changed the Gateway without downloading.  Went back to run and all was well in CCW, except the NAT couldn't find the Micro-850.  Blowing the project totally away and doing an upload we learned that the Gateway was not there.  So we did the 1 upload, 15 exports, 1 download and 15 imports and this time all worked fine.  SO HERE COMES BURN NUMBER TWO.  So now we try and place message instructions from Machine 1 to Machine 2 in place and nothing will communicate.  Now before you think we're total fools we had to Micro-850's talking to a Compact Logix on the shop bench just fine when they were all in the same subnet.  But when we placed NATs between them nothing works.  Hopefully our SI will sort this out over the weekend and I'll post that answer later.  SO HERE COMES BURN NUMBER THREE.  We've decided it is in our best interest to flash our Micro-850's to version 9.1, but given the Micro's track record we decided to flash a spare first and swap it in.  Only one problem, the Micro-850 is either such a hot commodity or poor unit that you can't get one for at least 2-3 weeks.  ANd FINALLY BURN NUMBER FOUR.  Trying to troubleshoot this week I wanted to force an INPUT on; only there is no right click and force option.  It is called variable monitoring and you must lock and un-lock.  It has been FORCE for two decades, why change what we call it.  Really did we need to make this more complicated.

 

OK I am done.  I will not knowingly spec or buy another 850 in my Plant.  Enough said.  Control and Compact Logix only.

[PLCMentor.com 60]

I feel your pain!  I came close to purchasing one of these low priced "marvels" and after a little bit of research and posts from guys like you I ran the other direction.  Trusty Micro 1400 was priced nice and none of the pain and suffering.  Everything I read said that they are not cost effective due to the extra time required unless you are an OEM using a bunch of them.  Of course the poor guy at the plant that gets stuck with the OEM installed stuff.... well his time is free right? 

[kaiser_will 65]

We started using the Micro850 with similar results.  To me it appears Rockwell didn't let anybody on the Micro850 team talk to anyone else in their organization (or the platform and software are 3rd party creations).  End result...Sales was told to NOT price orders with a Micro850.

[Michael Lloyd 85]

I picked up a Micro 850 to play with a few years ago. Once I had some time with it, I decided not to use it. Anywhere. Ever. And I won't. I don't even like using SLC's unless I have to and imho those were great PLC's for their time (and still have a place in industry today, especially the ML line). 

I'm glad we purchase our own PLC hardware here. 

[pcmccartney1 141]

As a SI, I actually think about y'all and make decisions on platforms and software that you already have, are intimately knowledgeable on and can support.  While technology continues on at an ever increasing pace, just seems the tried, true and proven get discarded for new, fancy, end all be all, full of promises, short on delivery platforms.

Just seems that the Micro850 was rushed to market with an "Alpha" rev software software and even in the years since, no remarkable improvements have been made.

I won't deny that it's a viable choice for an OEM, but generally I'm not interested in taking a leap of faith on unproven and less than widely accepted platforms just to save a few hundred dollars on hardware and lose several thousand on the programming, debug and support.

Sorry for the run-on sentences, but I was typing a stream of conscientiousness.

Edited 16 Sep 2016 by pcmccartney1

[TimWilborne 108]

We evaluated the micro 800s early on and they were just way too different. But as time has gone on we are getting more inquiries from customers asking us to please make articles to explain how to program and troubleshoot these when you use to the Micrologixs. Seems things aren't getting any better.

What irritates me is Rockwell is recommending these as an alternative to the obsolete Micrologix 1000 as if they are a direct replacement.

[Epy 1]

I had heard that the 800 series was rebranded or the design bought from elsewhere, one of the two. Makes sense. Thanks for ranting, I won't bother to try it.

[TravisPedley 21]

We've used 2 or 3 of them, (well 15 if you count multiple cloned machine).  They suck, but work well enough if you don't try to do anything fancy with them.  Ours are just a few inputs and a few outputs, no analog, very basic ladder programming.  We haven't had any hardware issues that I'm aware of, and I haven't had to service any of them.  My personal cap is 8 in/out max to use with these.  

[Joe E. 259]

We experimented with an 810 (or an 830?) very early on, with CCW v1.something.  And couldn't stand it.  The software was over-bloated and worth every penny we paid for it: $0.00.  The software actually felt like someone's senior capstone project with the internal help menu opening help for MS Visual Studio.  We ended up dropping it into a machine to handle a couple of rungs of relay logic and a single analog input but were never able to get a production window to test it, so it's just sitting there taking up panel space.  If I have any say at all, we won't buy any more.  The ML1400 is more than adequate for such applications.