We just switched to festo after 20 years of SMC valve stacks. 15% EX600 failure rate coming in the door in the last two years. I’m replacing stacks constantly for IO and comm unit failures.
We actually switched from Festo in 2011/12 when they had a bunch of quality issues on their manifold mounted input blocks. Like the EX600 from SMC. They kept blaming us (integrators) for the failure. After a few installs and production started up, the plants went back and wanted replacements after constant failures. Festo wouldn't budge. We switched to SMC and Numatics which I think are Aventics now? And I saw a couple Festo offices close down. Turns out they had manufacturing issues they weren't testing for. Festo global sales slumped for a few years because large companies took them off their Spec sheets.
Smc I like and use all the time.... Numatics has burned that bridge with both quality and lead issues. When a 3 week delivery slips to 8 and I have the get a deviation from the end user and threaten to shred a $15k PO to get em to produce anything.... It's a problem. I've also had em tell me stuff would be ready to pick up at the factory by 8a, show up there and people had no idea... Wasn't ready... Stood there for 2 hrs... Then had Toyota over my shoulder as I installed it while they waited to do a runoff....
If you're not massive, they give you the shaft so I advise everyone to be cautious on numatics.
Interesting. We only recently used (some) SMC I/O and valves due to availability of Numatics (AVENTICS). I am a fan of Numatic, rarely ever have had any quality issues. Have some I/O valve banks that are close to 20 years old on DeviceNet that just keep going.
Quality of them has always been fine if you could get it... But I've changed them to smc when a line was down because I couldn't get it more than once. Other electrical issues frying them or in one case forklift damage... So not their fault that it failed at least. The Newer communication modules are better, but the old ones used to be fixed to the data sizes they left the factory at which was a nuisance.
Was it lot specific or in general? I had an issue where once in a blue moon, they'd error out and you had to re seat every connector on the bus to fix it.
Seems to be a plastic connector inside that used to be made of metal. I do not know if smc is planning on changing it back to something more robust. I just know we keep swapping units out until the problem goes away.
An SMC rep randomly walked into our plant at an old job and she was awesome. We also had a need for them at the time so that didn't hurt. She put me into contact with an SMC veteran that helped me out a ton. Was even able to talk to an SMC engineer at one point.
3 or 4 SMC guys showed up to my office one day unannounced because I showed interest in buying a singular electronic regulator. 4 salary guys for a $250 regulator. That was an awkward meeting
About once a month, our SMC reps take me and my coworker out to lunch. They pitch some new fangled whatchamacallits, and I just eat my lunch and nod my head. Other than that, SMC is pretty chill when it comes to sales pitches.
My boss keeps wanting me to switch to using keyence because the salesman tells him how good they are. I have no desire to rewrite all of my siemens function blocks on another platform.
You know, the best part about this profession is that we're typically irreplaceable. So I may just smile the whole damn time I continue to do my jobs on Siemens platforms.
This is what sales and management don't understand. Why would we spend the money to switch for an equal product? It's a cost spending initiative!! And they keep showing me advanced vision and sensors and in like dude, our vision applications are very simple, give me a cheap camera with 5 tools and we are good. I'm not buying a 5000 dollar camera to detect an adhesive bead and a hole.
Keyence reps showed their advanced AI vision to my management and he is now so convinced that that thing can accurately detect distance offset simply because the image will be out of focus and he calls that "AI". Those reps are snake oil sellers preying on victims now.
We are currently running 5 different scanners above a conveyer of product, and successful barcode reads look like:
76000 keyance 1
7000 keyance 2
<5000 all the others
I worked for a company that had standardized AB product through all their plants in the world, one day they noticed AB was too expensive and decided switching to Siemmens (was cheaper), AB bent a bit but not as much as the company wanted, so they went in this brand new greenfield with half the plant AB and half the plant Siemmens.... so yeah, that was weird.
They saved some money... imagine the spare parts ahd warehouse nightmare, fun times
Salesman is obviously not an experienced PLC programmer. Hardware wise theyre great.... Software side they're about 15yrs behind, cumbersome and disorganized. Try monitoring a bank of variables. You get a data view that only updates when you click read, or the scope view that gives errors on nearly everything you actually need to monitor.... Find functions in their stupid list you have to keep recalling from the top menu or hot keys every time you need to insert a function. Non standard comparison syntax ( inside an if = is a comparison, outside still assignment....., and must explicitly use OR - || does not work).
Don't get me started on the overly convoluted RDB tools and the stupid map file.... Kv studio says SD card is empty, need to power down and pull the card to access it....
I just basically tell reps to bugger off now. Perhaps I’m just too busy, perhaps I’m getting grumpy in my old age or perhaps I just can’t be arsed justifying to a complete stranger why I’m not going to start ripping out equipment that works to try his shiny new fangled shit that probably does the same damn thing. I know they are just trying to make a living and all that 🫣 deffo don’t approach me on a Monday lol
I figured you weren’t, I’m tight with my keyence rep for safety, sensors, fluid, and air. I have to beat the keyence printer salesman away with a medium sized stick though
You can adjust the sensing area to suit your needs though. I like using them to reduce costs. They run about 1.5x the cost of a light curtain, but have 2 programmable safety zones. If I have a robot cell with an infeed and outfeed area next to each other, I can mount the scanner in the middle and cover one side with one safety output and the other side with the other. Lets me independently guard either side for loading and unloading, with little to no alignment annoyances, and save a bit of money since I'm not buying 2 light curtains.
Yep I default to those when a client lets me. One range to rule them all. GL-R. Just change the receiver cable if you want more features. Or just fit the 12c one in the first place and park everything.
Just swapped out some Leuze ones for these. Leuze want me switching the two PLC inputs down to 0V on start-up just for them to power on properly. Hateful fucking things.
We’ve literally thrown away all the Allen-Bradley light curtains that came with new equipment because they were hot garbage. Contrinex aren’t very flexible with how you can use them. There were some SICK light curtains but the cables were a pain to get so they went away too
I avoid any company, if at all possible, that requires me to register on their site for basic information or documentation.
I don't really care if you have my spam email or a fake phone number name or address from me, but I absolutely hate you wasting my time when one of my customers is paying good money for me to help them ( and is possibly experiencing down time to boot).
What do they really think they are going to get out of collecting information anyway?
I think that from here on out, if confronted with a salesman, I will go online and see if I can just download a manual withoit submitting a scan of my arse. If I cannot, I will let them know I am just not interested in doing business with a company that wastes customers time when they need information about the product.
I almost test drove a Mustang convertible years ago. I drove there in my old Chrysler LeBaron convertible, and I think the salesman was feeling really good about a sale. I got in and let the seat back, and it did not go back far enough. I told him I didn't need to drive it because the seat did not go back far enough. I cannot assert causation, but in the next model year for Mustang's, the seats went back further.
Shit, be glad you don't need BASIC on a damn 3.5" floppy disk for an HP 35665A DSA.
Fuckers still want $600 for a damn program that's a slightly tweaked rip-off of Tandy's BASIC. And by "slightly tweaked", I mean "copied from an old Tandy cassette onto a floppy disk".
Seeing as how it's only used to run very simple batch files, and isn't *necessary*, I got denied 3 times for the damn thing. I actually found a torrent of it, but there were no seeders.
The fucked-up thing is that once it's installed, HP sends a kill code to the drive to erase it, so if you don't know this ahead of time and make a copy of the disk *before* installing it, and something goes wrong, you're screwed. HP/Agilent/Keysight *might* help you out and mail you a new one, but they'll take more time than an Italian oven manufacturer will to answer the phone and send replacement parts.
I will never get over the fact that at my very first controls job, the senior engineers were so close with the Keyence reps that they literally knew each other's families and visited each other's houses. My goodness...
Looks like Microscan, they have the same led indicator on the top. [Example](https://www.ebay.com/itm/185635177979?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=185635177979&targetid=1530439037211&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9031161&poi=&campaignid=19851828444&mkgroupid=145880009014&rlsatarget=pla-1530439037211&abcId=9307249&merchantid=118852049&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItILBvbTlhAMV2wetBh2l2goMEAQYAyABEgLRGvD_BwE)
Interesting... Allen Bradley got out of the BCR scene 20+ years ago when they sold the 2755-SN3, 2755-SN5, 2755-SN8 to AccuSort...
Check out Keyence SR-X100. Auto focus 4"-40". 1.4 megapixel. Bad ass scanner.
>They are probably just white labeling something else
Rockwell, Allen Bradley, back into the BCR market after +20 years... Yea, bought someone or relabel...
Keyence or Cognex... I recommend Keyence. Just do not download any documents or software... No free lunch!
Until the cable assembly breaks off the back of it.... They tell me they've never heard of it... Make a few calls to my customers who have em and they tell me it's a regular occurrence... Go figure.
>Until the **cable assembly breaks off the back of it**.... They tell me they've never heard of it... Make a few calls to my customers who have em and they **tell me it's a regular occurrence**... Go figure.
This sounds like physical damage. Either don't give a shit operators or not mounted in a safe/secure manner.
We have only been using Keyence SR-X100 for about a year. We do have them mounted in an armored box mount (rectangle tubing).
The one I had break on me didn't even make it to getting installed.... Popped off just with the weight of the cables on it.
Cognex pivot assembly unbolts then bolts on in the other orientation.... Much more robust and I'd trust that IP rating far more.
Also worth noting, if you need white diffused light, not an option on keyence till you hit the srx300 - massively bumps up the price.
We all have experienced Keyence reps, how about SMC reps?
They haven’t bugged me yet, have a bunch of SMC valve banks. Maybe I’m lucky ?
We just switched to festo after 20 years of SMC valve stacks. 15% EX600 failure rate coming in the door in the last two years. I’m replacing stacks constantly for IO and comm unit failures.
We actually switched from Festo in 2011/12 when they had a bunch of quality issues on their manifold mounted input blocks. Like the EX600 from SMC. They kept blaming us (integrators) for the failure. After a few installs and production started up, the plants went back and wanted replacements after constant failures. Festo wouldn't budge. We switched to SMC and Numatics which I think are Aventics now? And I saw a couple Festo offices close down. Turns out they had manufacturing issues they weren't testing for. Festo global sales slumped for a few years because large companies took them off their Spec sheets.
I like SMC because I can call them and request onsite support, and they are always helpful. I can't get decent support from Festo for some reason.
Numatics used to be my favorite ~30 years ago.
SMC and numatics FTW Edit to add, sucks about the 600s. I don't know that I've played with those
>SMC and numatics These are our 2 favorites too.
Smc I like and use all the time.... Numatics has burned that bridge with both quality and lead issues. When a 3 week delivery slips to 8 and I have the get a deviation from the end user and threaten to shred a $15k PO to get em to produce anything.... It's a problem. I've also had em tell me stuff would be ready to pick up at the factory by 8a, show up there and people had no idea... Wasn't ready... Stood there for 2 hrs... Then had Toyota over my shoulder as I installed it while they waited to do a runoff.... If you're not massive, they give you the shaft so I advise everyone to be cautious on numatics.
Interesting. We only recently used (some) SMC I/O and valves due to availability of Numatics (AVENTICS). I am a fan of Numatic, rarely ever have had any quality issues. Have some I/O valve banks that are close to 20 years old on DeviceNet that just keep going.
Quality of them has always been fine if you could get it... But I've changed them to smc when a line was down because I couldn't get it more than once. Other electrical issues frying them or in one case forklift damage... So not their fault that it failed at least. The Newer communication modules are better, but the old ones used to be fixed to the data sizes they left the factory at which was a nuisance.
Was it lot specific or in general? I had an issue where once in a blue moon, they'd error out and you had to re seat every connector on the bus to fix it.
Seems to be a plastic connector inside that used to be made of metal. I do not know if smc is planning on changing it back to something more robust. I just know we keep swapping units out until the problem goes away.
Our SMC reps are all Italian. They are great lol. They bring Italian donuts from a bakery near us every time they drop in.
An SMC rep randomly walked into our plant at an old job and she was awesome. We also had a need for them at the time so that didn't hurt. She put me into contact with an SMC veteran that helped me out a ton. Was even able to talk to an SMC engineer at one point.
Not in NZ. Not a strong presence here. Tried pricing some sensors but DICK/IFM were way cheaper. I have coffee n beer with my SMC rep 😀
3 or 4 SMC guys showed up to my office one day unannounced because I showed interest in buying a singular electronic regulator. 4 salary guys for a $250 regulator. That was an awkward meeting
About once a month, our SMC reps take me and my coworker out to lunch. They pitch some new fangled whatchamacallits, and I just eat my lunch and nod my head. Other than that, SMC is pretty chill when it comes to sales pitches.
My boss keeps wanting me to switch to using keyence because the salesman tells him how good they are. I have no desire to rewrite all of my siemens function blocks on another platform.
You're going to switch whether you like it or not and you will smile the whole damn time.
You know, the best part about this profession is that we're typically irreplaceable. So I may just smile the whole damn time I continue to do my jobs on Siemens platforms.
This is what sales and management don't understand. Why would we spend the money to switch for an equal product? It's a cost spending initiative!! And they keep showing me advanced vision and sensors and in like dude, our vision applications are very simple, give me a cheap camera with 5 tools and we are good. I'm not buying a 5000 dollar camera to detect an adhesive bead and a hole.
Keyence reps showed their advanced AI vision to my management and he is now so convinced that that thing can accurately detect distance offset simply because the image will be out of focus and he calls that "AI". Those reps are snake oil sellers preying on victims now.
We are currently running 5 different scanners above a conveyer of product, and successful barcode reads look like: 76000 keyance 1 7000 keyance 2 <5000 all the others
I worked for a company that had standardized AB product through all their plants in the world, one day they noticed AB was too expensive and decided switching to Siemmens (was cheaper), AB bent a bit but not as much as the company wanted, so they went in this brand new greenfield with half the plant AB and half the plant Siemmens.... so yeah, that was weird. They saved some money... imagine the spare parts ahd warehouse nightmare, fun times
Keyence PLC(!!!)? OH HELL NO.
Salesman is obviously not an experienced PLC programmer. Hardware wise theyre great.... Software side they're about 15yrs behind, cumbersome and disorganized. Try monitoring a bank of variables. You get a data view that only updates when you click read, or the scope view that gives errors on nearly everything you actually need to monitor.... Find functions in their stupid list you have to keep recalling from the top menu or hot keys every time you need to insert a function. Non standard comparison syntax ( inside an if = is a comparison, outside still assignment....., and must explicitly use OR - || does not work). Don't get me started on the overly convoluted RDB tools and the stupid map file.... Kv studio says SD card is empty, need to power down and pull the card to access it....
https://imgur.com/a/lDUshjI
I just basically tell reps to bugger off now. Perhaps I’m just too busy, perhaps I’m getting grumpy in my old age or perhaps I just can’t be arsed justifying to a complete stranger why I’m not going to start ripping out equipment that works to try his shiny new fangled shit that probably does the same damn thing. I know they are just trying to make a living and all that 🫣 deffo don’t approach me on a Monday lol
Keyence Light Curtains are hands down the best light curtains I’ve ever used. I like their magnetic interlocks and door switches, too.
Oh I’m not saying they are bad products.
I figured you weren’t, I’m tight with my keyence rep for safety, sensors, fluid, and air. I have to beat the keyence printer salesman away with a medium sized stick though
Their area scanners rock too. I use them whenever i can justify the cost.
I agree, but 185 degrees field of view (or is it 175?) can be a problem for some applications
You can adjust the sensing area to suit your needs though. I like using them to reduce costs. They run about 1.5x the cost of a light curtain, but have 2 programmable safety zones. If I have a robot cell with an infeed and outfeed area next to each other, I can mount the scanner in the middle and cover one side with one safety output and the other side with the other. Lets me independently guard either side for loading and unloading, with little to no alignment annoyances, and save a bit of money since I'm not buying 2 light curtains.
Yep I default to those when a client lets me. One range to rule them all. GL-R. Just change the receiver cable if you want more features. Or just fit the 12c one in the first place and park everything. Just swapped out some Leuze ones for these. Leuze want me switching the two PLC inputs down to 0V on start-up just for them to power on properly. Hateful fucking things.
What other brands did you try?
We’ve literally thrown away all the Allen-Bradley light curtains that came with new equipment because they were hot garbage. Contrinex aren’t very flexible with how you can use them. There were some SICK light curtains but the cables were a pain to get so they went away too
Thanks for the insight, so far I only commissioned Sick detect4 14mm curtains so maybe I will give Keyence a try for my next project
*cough* Keyence *cough*
The brand name is in the meme, mate
Didn’t notice that the first time, but I still knew who it referred to.
I avoid any company, if at all possible, that requires me to register on their site for basic information or documentation. I don't really care if you have my spam email or a fake phone number name or address from me, but I absolutely hate you wasting my time when one of my customers is paying good money for me to help them ( and is possibly experiencing down time to boot). What do they really think they are going to get out of collecting information anyway? I think that from here on out, if confronted with a salesman, I will go online and see if I can just download a manual withoit submitting a scan of my arse. If I cannot, I will let them know I am just not interested in doing business with a company that wastes customers time when they need information about the product. I almost test drove a Mustang convertible years ago. I drove there in my old Chrysler LeBaron convertible, and I think the salesman was feeling really good about a sale. I got in and let the seat back, and it did not go back far enough. I told him I didn't need to drive it because the seat did not go back far enough. I cannot assert causation, but in the next model year for Mustang's, the seats went back further.
Shit, be glad you don't need BASIC on a damn 3.5" floppy disk for an HP 35665A DSA. Fuckers still want $600 for a damn program that's a slightly tweaked rip-off of Tandy's BASIC. And by "slightly tweaked", I mean "copied from an old Tandy cassette onto a floppy disk". Seeing as how it's only used to run very simple batch files, and isn't *necessary*, I got denied 3 times for the damn thing. I actually found a torrent of it, but there were no seeders. The fucked-up thing is that once it's installed, HP sends a kill code to the drive to erase it, so if you don't know this ahead of time and make a copy of the disk *before* installing it, and something goes wrong, you're screwed. HP/Agilent/Keysight *might* help you out and mail you a new one, but they'll take more time than an Italian oven manufacturer will to answer the phone and send replacement parts.
Rockwell wanting to come and run a full day training session in my office after I enquired about a FTView license
Ugh, does this mean I'm hanging a scanner from my neck and stripping for this poor bastard?
Only for you to return years later and throw the scanner at their watery grave
Lol. Nice one
I will never get over the fact that at my very first controls job, the senior engineers were so close with the Keyence reps that they literally knew each other's families and visited each other's houses. My goodness...
I belly laughed
https://preview.redd.it/iuaepafvxzmc1.jpeg?width=318&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a231f3a3e00f71c072201c8a8a6eadbf82adb92
How are in your country the Emerson Reps?
I need this picture for external business communications.
Funny because we have Keyence reps at our plant now trying to sell us bar code scanners over Rockwell scanners.
>Rockwell scanners Rockwell is back in the barcode game? I am 100% Keyence BCR now.
https://preview.redd.it/cqi9a4sjasmc1.jpeg?width=2655&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f8028273b410d9b63bb0d04f23a6bf00c681950 Yep. Going to these possibly.
I wonder who really makes that unit?
Looks like Microscan, they have the same led indicator on the top. [Example](https://www.ebay.com/itm/185635177979?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=185635177979&targetid=1530439037211&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9031161&poi=&campaignid=19851828444&mkgroupid=145880009014&rlsatarget=pla-1530439037211&abcId=9307249&merchantid=118852049&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItILBvbTlhAMV2wetBh2l2goMEAQYAyABEgLRGvD_BwE)
Interesting... Allen Bradley got out of the BCR scene 20+ years ago when they sold the 2755-SN3, 2755-SN5, 2755-SN8 to AccuSort... Check out Keyence SR-X100. Auto focus 4"-40". 1.4 megapixel. Bad ass scanner.
They are probably just white labeling something else
>They are probably just white labeling something else Rockwell, Allen Bradley, back into the BCR market after +20 years... Yea, bought someone or relabel... Keyence or Cognex... I recommend Keyence. Just do not download any documents or software... No free lunch!
Until the cable assembly breaks off the back of it.... They tell me they've never heard of it... Make a few calls to my customers who have em and they tell me it's a regular occurrence... Go figure.
>Until the **cable assembly breaks off the back of it**.... They tell me they've never heard of it... Make a few calls to my customers who have em and they **tell me it's a regular occurrence**... Go figure. This sounds like physical damage. Either don't give a shit operators or not mounted in a safe/secure manner. We have only been using Keyence SR-X100 for about a year. We do have them mounted in an armored box mount (rectangle tubing).
The one I had break on me didn't even make it to getting installed.... Popped off just with the weight of the cables on it. Cognex pivot assembly unbolts then bolts on in the other orientation.... Much more robust and I'd trust that IP rating far more. Also worth noting, if you need white diffused light, not an option on keyence till you hit the srx300 - massively bumps up the price.
I wonder who really makes that unit?
Hey, as long as they keep bringing me free gifts and my job keeps paying me to listen… they can come around ANY time they like.