Schneider PLCs

My local distributor that carries some of the other lines I use is recommending a Schneider M241 PLC for a project. It's mostly a data acquisition system, with the ability to save reports. The Schneider has a built-in web server, so we can access it from a PC and save things to an external hard drive or print them to the printer.

Does anyone have any experience, good or bad, with Schneider PLCs?

Or any PLCs that can run an inkjet printer directly?

DanielG said:

My local distributor that carries some of the other lines I use is recommending a Schneider M241 PLC for a project. It's mostly a data acquisition system, with the ability to save reports. The Schneider has a built-in web server, so we can access it from a PC and save things to an external hard drive or print them to the printer.

Does anyone have any experience, good or bad, with Schneider PLCs?

Or any PLCs that can run an inkjet printer directly?

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Have had a little experience with Schneider PLCs but just in the using of them on a machine, didn't do any programming with them myself, but they seem to be decent and did everything they were needed to do.

Schneider is a big company, that owns SquareD, Telemecanique and a bunch of other long time companies.

I have used their Schneider electrical components and lots of parts from their other companies for many years. I wouldn't hesitate on using one of their PLC's, if I had time to learn their system or had someone available to do it.

I'd take a look at PLCs from Automation Direct. I've used various models for at least 30 years with excellent results. Currently using BRX series. FREE programming software. FREE, excellent no BS tech support. Have a meeting on Monday with my previous employer. We just got a PO from them for an automated pipe grooving machine using a BRX with 8 axis of servo motion. Doable with just PLC because of built in 3 axis coordinated motion and two 3 axis coordinated expansion modules.

garyhlucas said:

I'd take a look at PLCs from Automation Direct. I've used various models for at least 30 years with excellent results. Currently using BRX series. FREE programming software. FREE, excellent no BS tech support. Have a meeting on Monday with my previous employer. We just got a PO from them for an automated pipe grooving machine using a BRX with 8 axis of servo motion. Doable with just PLC because of built in 3 axis coordinated motion and two 3 axis coordinated expansion modules.

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I have used the BRX in the past; they worked well for me. The big advantage of the Schneider in this case is the web server. As far as I can tell from reading the website, the automation direct ones don't have an easy way to control them from a PC.

Tangential comment to DanielG. Please give some serious thought to firewalling/air-gapping your machine control network from your office/business LAN. You can buy a small form-factor fanless PC (good for dusty filthy environments) and give it a keyboard and monitor for not all that much money. Attach that to your machine control network and leave it disconnected from the rest of the business. Use "sneaker net" (USB drives these days) to move content onto the machine control PC.

sfriedberg said:

Tangential comment to DanielG. Please give some serious thought to firewalling/air-gapping your machine control network from your office/business LAN. You can buy a small form-factor fanless PC (good for dusty filthy environments) and give it a keyboard and monitor for not all that much money. Attach that to your machine control network and leave it disconnected from the rest of the business. Use "sneaker net" (USB drives these days) to move content onto the machine control PC.

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It will be airgapped.