Shawn discusses the Fourth Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today’s Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition: Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

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Automation Tech Talk Show Notes: Thanks for listening! If you’d like to join the show sometime, don’t hesitate to use the contact us link. Links mentioned in video: – Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-4/
– Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/ Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)

Shawn Tierney (Host): So I wanna welcome everybody. Happy Monday. I wanna welcome you all too. Sorry if we get some echo. I’m actually here in the, really the, the foyer, the the kind of the you know, where you walk into my offices.

And today, we’re gonna talk about the CompactLogic’s fourth generation. I do wanna wish you all a very happy Monday morning. And what you see here is the METTLA Toledo trade show demo from well, I I expect it’ll be an automation fair this year and other fairs as well. I wanna say hi to, I think it’s Jim’s the the because of the setup, the screen is very far away. So but hello to everybody who’s watching.

So in any case, this is what I’m working on next couple days. I gotta get this all up and running and do a video on how to set it up and use it, and I just thought it would be really fun. It’s a rate control application. So, the the scale feeds into the I n d three sixty, and then no matter how much is left in there, it keeps maintains a steady rate out. So it should be pretty cool, but I’m looking forward to getting that set up later today.

And I was here, so I figured, well, let’s just do today’s automation, tech talk lunchtime edition from the foyer. Again, I apologize for any echoes you’re here. Last minute mic setup change. So I’m wearing the lavalier mic, not the the headset that I was hoping to use. But in any case, let me know if you guys can hear me okay.

If everything looks good on my side, make sure you could see me okay. What we’re gonna do today is the generation for oh, I know what I wanted to say. Tomorrow and I believe it’s tomorrow and Friday, we have special guests coming on to talk to us about their companies and, what they’ve learned, recently in automation. So this way, you guys don’t have to always just wait to hear from me. And what I’ve learned, you can hear from other people, and I invite all our audience to also, thank you, Jims, to also, you know, come and join up in, a ten day a ten day lunchtime, automation tech talk with me.

Because, you know, I I’ll tell you what. I learn every time I go somewhere or visit somebody or talk to someone, I learn something new, and, I love learning new stuff too. So I wanna invite you all to come on the show. Now with that said, let’s see if everything’s all still set up correctly. And to do to switch to make the switch because I’m here in the lobby, I’m gonna have to do it like this.

Okay. Great. It looks like it’s working. Okay. Let’s see here.

Alright. Alright. Excellent. So we’re talking about the CompactLogic’s fourth generation, which is also known as, the fifty three seventy line. So we talked about on the first gen, we talked about the fifty three twenty and thirty, then we talked about the fifty three thirty one, 32, and 35.

We talked about the fifty three forty three and forty five, and so now we’re on the fifty three seventy. And I gotta tell you, this, I thought, was a great product launch. I gotta remember, I’m using my my webcam now, so, don’t put my hands in front of my face. But in any case, yes. So I, you know, I thought it was such a great product watch because if I remember correctly, they all came out at the same time, the l one, l two, and l three.

They all have the same features. Now this presentation I’m using is a free presentation from Rockwell. You should feel free to call Rockwell and ask them for a copy, and, they should give it to you. But in any case, I did take this compilation that I’ve been putting together for some training. I did make it available in my CompactLogix course.

So if you’re in my CompactLogix course, go to appendix a. It’s the first item up there that you download this compilation. Again, all the slides are free. What I did is I spent over a day going through them and taking out all the good slides and try to put put them into one one collection. But, again, every all the source material is free from Rockwell.

So with that said, let me see if I can find my mouse here, and let’s jump into this. So like I said, there were three of these released. Three in this one series, we had the l one, l two, and l three. And these address a ton of the complaints from the previous I mean, the improvements are just awesome. First of all, there’s some commonality with all of these that, that, you know, they all have, you know, internal capacitors.

No more batteries. They all have a USB port. No more serial port. They all come with an SD card. No more having to buy a 100 doll explain it to the boss why you have to buy a 100 or $200 Rockwell Compact Flash card.

Right? And so I think those things alone are awesome. Plus they all had a built in two port switch. Now you can’t not with these guys. You can’t use that that that’s just one IP address.

It’s a switch. It’s not two independent ports, but still very cool. The l two and l three, as you can see here on the screen, supported, the seventeen sixty nine I l, and the l one supported point I l. And the l one was much less expensive, and, you know, it just addressed all the issues we had with the l 23, but in any case, that we talked about earlier in the week. So the l one specifically, you can see it here.

We have one in the training room. I’m not I didn’t I decided to do the presentation and not and not rip everything apart in the training room because that’s just a lot of work. I figure we could you know, in fifteen, twenty minutes with the presentation, we’ll cover everything we need to know. But in any case, it’s supported up to two axes of motion. So caveat there.

You know, this is not gonna be, you need a an m version, like an l 18 m, right, or e r m to do a motion. Right? But, it was things that you could do to point IO because that that’s so much less expensive. You can only have, I believe, six six modules four or six modules. I have to look that up.

I think it’s in here. But in any case, you know, you could get point out with eight point inputs and eight point outputs. So, really good. I covered all this, you know, status indicators. The it didn’t have a key, Although, who cared?

Right? Nobody cared. You had the toggle switch on the front, and, you know, the amount of distributed IO you could do on the Ethernet was limited. But still, if you just need, you know, perfect for a new OEM, you need a maybe an HMI and a couple of VFDs, a great, great little controller. And, I was a big fan of it.

I wish they would still do the starter pack with that because that was a great deal too. Then we had the l two. This is and I’m using these I’m specifically using these nomenclatures because this is what we use, to talk about them. You know, the l 23 is the l 23. When I say l one, l two, l three, we’re talking specifically about the fifty three seventies.

And, again, I I don’t know why they did the slide this way, but I would actually have have named this one the fifty three seventy one that is actually on the module itself on the side. And I would have called this fifty three seventy two. Again, that’s exact that’s on the module. But But I maybe they just wanted to show, hey. This is all one family, so they just call them all 53 seventies on the individual slides.

But long story short, this is just like the l 23, but a lot smaller, has removable compact flash. There’s no serial only version. They have Ethernet. And, this one’s motor up to four axis if you had the m version. You know, you could get the built in high speed counter if you wanted.

So in any case, a huge upgrade from the l 23, and then we had the l three. So this replaces your l 35. And and, really, in most cases, we replace your your l four because we’re not using Sarcos anymore. We’re doing sip motion, and, you can get this this comes in several different sizes. So if you need lots of, servos, you need lots of modules, this guy would do it for you.

Now there is a version of this that they that has no stored energy. So, you know, we have this capacitor backup that’s in the model in the unit, so we don’t need to have a battery. But, what if you need to have no energy in the thing when it’s turned off? Right? Like, let’s say in our mind or you’re in a explosive environment that when you turn this off all power has to drain, there could be no stored energy.

And so they do because it’s not removable like the l seven. They do have a version of this that will not have that capacitor in there, in which case, you’re gonna have to reload from the SD card. Right? So, in any case, you can see here just such a jump up from the l 35 e. Again, the ports are on the bottom.

Here’s a picture I took of my units. So on the left, you have the l two, and on the right, you have the l three. So you can see the ports there on the bottom of the units. Okay. Now this starts going in the Compact I Logic I o again.

You guys probably already know all about this, but I left this in here for the students who are maybe brand new to this and wanna learn more about this. I did just so the students know, I do have one of these units in the school. I’m getting ready to do some labs on it for you guys. So maybe we’ll even do some, some tests. We also have point IO on a on a actually, I should say IO Link on point IO as well.

That will be have some coming up labs. So in any case, if you guys are not in my compact course, Rockwell should be able to get you these or your distributor should be able to get you these slides. That’s where I got mine. But in any case, if you’re in the course, all these slides are there. So that’s it for the fourth generation of CompactLogix.

Again, I think probably most of you out there are using Rockwell, familiar with these. Of course, we’ll cover the fifth gen. Again, I have us, guest coming on. Let me set see if I can switch back to full side. And I do have some people, on LinkedIn commenting here.

So let me see if I can pull that up really quick. And let me let’s see here. So I don’t have all my fancy buttons that, you know, my that I would have in the other room. So let me switch back to full screen here, and let me see if I can see some of the questions that came in. Let’s see.

Have a discussion about cinematics s two twenty and c u three twenty, with the Siemens managers. Well, we’ve covered the s two twenty, and I think we’re gonna cover the s two twenty again. Talking about the clean energy version of that drive. I got that in my schedule. So that’s great.

I we also had in, an exchange for some marketing dollars, to do some, ad free how tos. We had an s two twenty donated to us to use at the school. So, we hope to get to that again. Number one priority is keeping the lights on so, you know, actually making money, but we do like samples, and, we’ll definitely get to all of those. So the next one, and I thank you for the all the good comments.

Great. Thank you and all that. The fifty three seventy l one is still active products. Alright. So Dean is saying that the l two and l three just went active mature.

That’s too bad because if we look at oh, we’ll talk about this tomorrow in great detail. But if you look at the, fifth generation, right, the fifty three eighties, they’re a lot more expensive. Why? Now, again, could the vendor increase the price of the lower lower, you know, the slower, less memory products so there is the same as our new products? Yeah.

They could. But in any case, if we look at the launch price and the real price, not the any inflated pricing that goes on as a marketing scheme, I’m not saying that’s what they’re doing. I haven’t looked at the pricing. Okay? So but I’m saying sometimes you will see that.

But in any case, the l two and l three are not the high capacity, high speed, you know, controllers. Right? Their IO is not as fast as fifty three seventy IO is not as fast as fifty three eighty. 50 we we’ve had, Rockwell on the show. They talked about that, the performance difference between one and the other.

And I think Rocco does a great job of you know what? Let me see if I have this slide. I think does a great job of talking about performance versus, you know, your OEM type. You know, if you need a standard controller or a performance controller. And so I’m going back to my desktop now, and I wanna thank Dean for for providing that information because I really appreciate that.

I don’t get to file that the I don’t get to know I if there was a way to get notifications of that stuff, I would definitely sign up for it, but there’s just, like I just want POC, HMI, VFD, you know, get those notifications. But in any case, the reason I came back to the slides is because there is a, some Rocco did some great jobs. So here’s one of the slides. We’ll cover this tomorrow, but they call it their performance controller. And so the l three is their nonperformance.

I’m kinda, like, going into some of tomorrow stuff today, but there is a nice chart here. Again, all of these public free slides are available from your Arakwal distributor. These are dated 2016, but, you know, with I’m just looking at some of these charts here that talk about speed, and and we’ll go through these. You know, we’ll spend some extra time on these tomorrow. Okay?

But you can see here we’re comparing the l, you can see the l three x, l three, and the fifty five eighty. K? You can see the speeds. I mean, it’s not even not even close. Right?

The speed comparison. So I always thought it was great to have the l three for your for your larger OEMs and then the the fifty three eighty, right, for your, you know, high end system needs. Right? And so if Raquel you know? And I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.

Maybe there’s a component shortage or maybe, you know, something else is going on. Let me switch back to full screen here. You guys don’t need to see my Google desktop. But in any case, who knows what’s going on? I do not.

But I do appreciate Dean. He even put a link on now this is on LinkedIn. He even put a link in there, that that, shows the, information on that. So, Dean, thank you again, and, thank you everybody who’s saying thank you. What are we at?

Fifteen minutes? I think that’s all I have for today. So I’ll be working on this next couple days, but we should have a guest on tomorrow. I believe it’s Thursday or Friday. We have another guest on.

These are people you guys will probably know from LinkedIn, if you’re on LinkedIn. And, one of them is Brandon, who’s done a lot of articles and and stuff for us over the years. And then, we’ll do January 5, I think, on Wednesday. And then you should see this probably in a couple weeks because it has to go through the review process once the video’s done. And we got, some other cool stuff coming out as well.

But with that, I’m gonna end lunchtime tech talk. Again, I wanna invite vendors and users to come on the show and share what you know, what you’ve learned. I know I also wanna get into, I got a new PLC from Schneider. I wanna start covering them at lunchtime as well. I still have to, I literally have to buy a light switch because the occupancy sensor in there, I can’t get at the stand long enough to get through a show.

It turns lights off. And because of my monitors and everything, it just there’s no way to set up the stage so the occupancy sensor could see me. And so I literally have to buy a light switch for that room and, and get that set up so I can actually, go from that room. But in any case, I wanna wish you guys all a great rest of your Monday. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness.

And until next time, my friends, peace.

If you have any questions about Shawn’s in-person or online courses, please don’t hesitate to setup a time to meet with Shawn via MSTeams, or drop him an email using his contact form here: https://theautomationschool.com/question/

Until next time, Peace ✌️ 

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Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Eliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.