Anyone else get frustrated as h-e-double hockey sticks with AB? Great products, but they can be overly complicated and a bit stingy with their PLC tech info. If you don't have a service agreement, forget it!!
Example: Emergency call-out for a fuse problem w/ a ControlLogix 1756 OA16 output card. I'm about 45 min away, so we start troubleshooting on the phone. The current problem (they've been working on this for 3 hours before they called me, so who knows what the original problem is) is the fuse light on the card is lit. The mill electrician has already called the equipment's OEM tech support and they said there is no fuse, just reset the module and go. Didn't work. WTF??!! I point out that if there was no fuse, there would be no fuse light. DUHHH!!
Anyway, I tell him to pull the card and check the fuse.
By the time I get on site, they are taking the card apart and we find a blown fuse. I check each individual output for shorts or grounds, everythings okay. The outputs consist of solenoid valves, 1 per. Each output is w/ a 2 A fast blow glass fuse, and the output cards fuse is a 3 A slow blow. I force each output on individually, no problem. Turns out a program glitch (the machine is less than a year old, and they hadn't had this exact set of circumstances yet) is trying to operate up and down solenoids at the same time, and that's what blew the fuse.
Here's my b*tch...while I've got the mill electrician verifing field wiring, etc. I go online to AB's web site to check their knowledgebase. After 10 min of navigating, I finally find a forum with a thread topic similar to my problem, and guess what...it's locked, and you can only access it with a tech support agreement!
As expensive as this stuff is, you'd think they would be less stingy with the info. I've never had this problem with their drives support, in fact just the opposite. Wonder what's the deal?
Linear Mode
