My Automation Direct page

Below is a posting to Mr.PLC.com that I did.

I was a hardcore Allen Bradley person from 1989 through 1999.
I worked in a lot of different industries that all used Allen Bradley so it was natural.
I was offered a position that would allow me to design total turnkey systems from the ground up. The catch was that they wanted me to look at using Automation Direct PLC's. I was very leery of that but went ahead. The first thing that blew me away was the cost of everything. Everything was 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of Allen Bradley including software. My first thought was that it was crap. Once again I went ahead. My first system was based on there top of the line DL405 Series PLC. The D4-450, I used the usual digital ins and outs but also used 2 of there High speed counter cards, the D4-HSC, which was tracking some encoders that were controlling positioning and velocity controls. My AC drives had the ability to communicate via modbus, which I connected to the PLC and let the PLC Supervise and control the AC drives. Everything works great. It all fell into place so well. Yea I missed a lot of the ease of some of the Allen Bradley's functions like off delay timers and especially the math functions, which are a bit of a pain with Automation Direct, especially when doing floating point math.

About failure rates.
I have in the last 5 years built 12 full control system using every type of there PLC's except the 305 Series and the DL105.
I have had 0 out of the box failures or problems. I have had 0 operational failures. One of my first systems, which runs our exhaust control system that keeps our plant within EPA regulations, has been running now for 37560 hours or 4.28 years continuously except for power outages.
This system has crashed 1 time. I say crashed, we were struck by lightning and the processor was kicked out of run and was flashing a cpu error. I fixed it by turning off the control power to the PLC turning it back on and turning the mode switch from program to run and back to life it came. It didn’t lose its program or any of the data stored in its retentive memory. We did however lose 2 AC drives. 1 motor and 1 un-isolated thermocouple transmitter.

My favorite PLC was the DL05.
Where else could you get a $99 PLC and add a $80 analog card and be able to make a system that has a built in high speed counter and PID functions for $179 bucks?

My new favorite PLC is the DL06.
It has all the above plus you can add 3 more of there ever expanding selection of option cards and get a $60 LCD Module that lets you basically have a inexpensive HMI built right into the PLC and all of this will set you back a grand total of $258 with the LCD. Oh it also can send and receive ASCII.

Now for my favorite soapbox speech. Lets talk software!
I bought their Directsoft 32 Version 2 back in 1999 for $495. They upgraded me to Version 3 for free. I was able to keep my Version 3 software updated for the next 3 years by downloading the updates right from their WEB site for FREE! No I didn’t have a yearly service contract like Allen Bradley, there not needed for Automation Direct software. When Version 4 came out I dumped a massive $199 for the update. I have updated version 4 several times for FREE as before. I have updated my touch screen, display panels and even my Lookout Direct software for Free, $0, Zero, nada extra.

I have updated the firmware for almost every one of the PLC’s, Touch screens and panels I’ve used for free, once again right from there WEB site and once again no renewable service contract needed.

I can’t even begin, nor do I even care, to think how much money was spent between 1989 and 1999 in service contracts for updating software, firmware and the like from AB. Not to mention the initial painful expense of buying the software and hardware to begin with.

And now with Automation Direct’s continued effort to expand their product lines. I am saving my company and my customers huge amounts of money on everything from Terminal blocks to AC Drives, Circuit breakers, Switch’s, Indicators, Touch screens, Sensors and even Enclosures.

Automation Direct once again makes the world a brighter safer place for budget minded company's that still want a quality product that it can afford to use.
Bravo!!!

Len Averyt
Electrical and Automation Engineering

Or Techknowman@techknowman.com
www.Techknowman.com