Beckhoff's twincat plc has an advantage over PC, CPU, and MEMORY. It has a good user interface and a good environment as well.
Scalability of Beckhoff's TwinCAT plc
First, you may scale up the performance of your system for a fraction of the price of scaling up to large PLC and PAC systems since Beckhoff TwinCAT PLC makes use of a PC CPU and memory.
Second, you may scale up your I/O sizes with EtherCAT without significantly affecting performance or cost. The servo drives are less expensive since the bus speed is fast enough to close the loop from the PLC rather than in the device itself, and the individual I/O slices are substantially less expensive than for other bus technologies.
When you need to combine TwinCAT with the MES layer in your business, that's when it really shines. Beckhoff offers a free DLL for Windows applications to interface with the PLC through a communication protocol called ADS, unlike the majority of other vendors who insist you purchase pricey OPC or other connection software. (If you require one, they also offer an OPC server as an add-on.)
PRICE of Beckhoff's TwinCAT plc
Twincat plc has a low cost and lots of features that make it more special than others. Beckhoff provides a feature set that is comparable to or better than its rivals, with just as many or more communication options, for a price that is substantially lower (it uses real-time PC control rather than specialized hardware). If you look at the specifications, it can accomplish anything and won't break the bank.
The advantages of TwinCAT plc
- A button click on the HMI can start another application (Excel, etc.)
- You can set up a variety of intriguing alert responses, such as starting a program or sending an email.
- There is an optional add-in that enables the PLC to interface with a SQL Server in a restricted manner.
- It is powered by common hardware. The cost of a larger touch screen compared to a PanelView is significantly fewer thanks to the low cost of PC hardware. The EtherCAT "Fieldbus" card costs less than $100. Even a direct DeviceNet card from another vendor is more expensive than a Beckhoff EtherCAT to DeviceNet master solution.
- For less than a stand-alone safety controller from another manufacturer, consider TwinSAFE, a safety controller that is directly connected to your field bus.
The disadvantages of TwinCAT plc
- Each time you make an online edit, all of your forces are reset. To apply them again, you must reload your watch list.
- There appears to be no auto-wrapping in the ladder logic editor.
- When I was modifying the HMI, the HMI editor crashed a few times, and I had to restart the TwinCAT system (not the PC, just the software)
- There is not enough English documentation.
Conclusion:
When you start scaling up the number of I/O and drives you to require, TwinCAT is much less expensive than any other important competitor in the industrial automation equipment industry, and it also has comparable (and in some cases better) functionalities to offer. There's no reason I'd ever suggest a PCWorx/MultiProg solution from Phoenix Contact given that it's even much less expensive than the Phoenix Contact solution (from my memory). The Phoenix offering is more expensive and inferior.
TwinCAT's ease of use is superior to Omron and RSLogix, but it isn't as user-friendly as PCWorx/MultiProg, Because of how unpolished TwinCAT's ladder editor is in comparison to RSLogix, most of my complaints with it are unsurprising considering its German origins. Europe seems to prefer instruction lists, structured text, and function block diagrams, but North America favors ladder logic. The TwinCAT ladder logic editor feels a little underdeveloped, but it is still usable. When compared to the RSLogix sequential function chart editor, the TwinCAT sequential function chart editor was actually rather comparable.