CompactLogix Gen 3: Automation Tech Talk for August 21, 2025

Shawn discusses the Third Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition: Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Automation Tech Talk Show Notes: Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link. Links mentioned in video: - Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-3/ - Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/ Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk, lunchtime edition. I hope you're having a great day. And, I ate my lunch early, so I'm here ready to go. And I just wanna welcome everybody who's joining. I can see people joining up, and, please feel free to leave comments as you go. And, somebody asked yesterday why I wasn't covering a particular product. I've never heard of that product. So I wanna invite that person to come on the show and tell us all about the product. And I wanna thank everybody who's actually reached out to me about coming on the show. We had some very interesting guests that are gonna come on and talk about what they're learning and what they're doing. That's all about what this lunchtime show is about, you know, just sharing what we learned. And because I have the kind of disarray in here, I'm going over the generations of CompactLogix. And today, we're gonna look at generation number three. Now you can always watch this if you're not available during lunch. I know some people can't get to the computer at lunchtime. That's okay. You can always watch the replay. I'm also releasing this as an audio podcast. I've renamed the old automation news roundup news headlines podcast automation tech talk, and, it's also being put on the blog. And if you're one of those morning readers and you can't watch a video, I'm also putting trying to put every, transcript up there now. It costs me extra to do that, but I'm trying to get those up there. It costs extra to get it, but it's a really good transcript. It's not just like the the captions you get on YouTube. So, not that it's a 100% correct. It's all AI generated. But in any case, it's nice for those people who wanna read about, what, the video instead of watching the video. Right? In any case, with that said, I hope you are all doing well. I'm just checking my mic, checking my video. Everything looks looks to be working on this side. Again, if you're seeing not seeing something working, let me know in the chat. Otherwise, I'll just talk the whole time and not know that you can't hear me. So in any case, the first thing I wanna do, though, is let's see if I rearrange this correctly. Yeah. So I wanted to show you where I wanna try to broadcast from tomorrow. So tomorrow, I'm gonna try to use what I'm gonna call Studio C. So I get this studio set up for, you know, recording my lessons, And so there's not a lot of room on the workbench, and there's a lot of other products I wanna cover besides what's on the workbench here. So that's why I'm, trying to get this set up. I don't know if you can see. Probably can't. I got a Monoclon PLC on there. And so that will be Studio C for shop for, closet. It's kinda like the you know, when you were a kid, you might had a if you went to a small school, you might had a a cafeteria. This is kinda like the closet slash storage closet slash three d printing area slash studio and, slash tool room, etcetera, etcetera. So in any case, with that said, also, if you have any questions on what I cover today, if you're enrolled in my course over at the automationschool.com, I did put a link in the description. Please feel free to ask them. I know I probably won't cover this, this new guy as much in the new course as I did in the original course, but don't worry about that. If you have the original course, you get the new course. And if you end up buying the new course, you'll get the original cost. So there's a big you know, over the years, a lot changes, and it doesn't seem to make sense to go back. But, of course, I can always add lessons. So I had somebody ask me the other day if I could add a lesson, I added it. So, that's what being a full time instructor, that's makes it easy for me to do. So in any case, let's go ahead and go to the overhead cam here, and this is where I'll need to put the old glasses on. And we can see the, third generation of CompactLogix. This is the l four, commonly known as the l four x. This particular one I picked up, on the secondhand market was a, l 43. I, did check with some distributors to see if they wanted the pot with their demo cases. They did not. So I I'm sure they are collecting dust dust in there in there or sitting at some customer site in collecting dust. But in any case, this actually came in two different flavors. There was an l 43 and an l 45. And a lot of people don't know this, but this is actually like an l six in a, in a, CompactLogix form factor. So and you don't know. A lot of people never use these, but they were very powerful, bringing that, control CompactLogix ControlLogix down to the CompactLogix. So, some of the things here, let's just look at the, look at the unit first physically. This is the only CompactLogix that had a left hand bust or left side bust, and we'll talk about that all more in a minute. But the right side, we still used our regular old 1769. Okay? And then in the front, for whatever reason, they put a cover over the CompactFlash slot. Okay? But this is a good cover. It like, it's not like the l 71. The first l 71 I got or l seven I got, I broke the latch because I was pushing down so hard. My finger just kept going and broke the, and broke the little tab. So I actually took it off my l seven I have here for the training room because, I don't want anybody to break it. But in any case, this one's good. This is not like that. This is very, very good, easy to open and close. Don't know why they put it in there. Maybe they had to meet some kind of spec, and it was sticking out farther than what it does on the, the ones we looked at yesterday. But in any case, and just like the l three x that we looked at yesterday, gen two, these units had a, serial port. The key, they changed the key. Not a fan of this. So the new key they had on these guys, and I I don't have one out. Probably should've got one out, but it's like a hollow key. It's a plastic hollow key. And so you may if anybody knows me, knows I keep a PLC five and a and a six five hundred ControlLogix, key on CompactLogix key on my keychain. And the reason is because, you know, I've driven someplace for three or four hours just to get there to see the PLCs in a hot run. And I'm like, do you guys have any PLC keys here? And they were like, no. They're like, well, you just wasted four hours. Now eight hours because I gotta drive back home of my life because you don't have a key. I mean, that's like saying, you know anyways, help us with a computer, and you don't have a computer. Right? It's, like, ridiculous. Anyhow, so that would that memory was buried pretty deep there. In any case, these keys, I had one on my key chain for a while, but it broke. It's just it was a cheap plastic, and it was hollow, and it broke. And so was not a fan of the key. Again, if you just leave the key in there, it's not a problem. But in any case, I I again, I don't know why they changed to that key, but I would have preferred if they would have stayed with the same key. I know tolerances would have been a little tight, but maybe they could have moved it over. I don't know. But in any case, that key doesn't return in any other product that I know of. So that's good. And I wanna say hi to the folks who are saying hi in the chat. Hi, guys. Alright. So what else do we wanna talk about this? This did have a default comms button. Now we talked about how with the, first generation, that default comms button, right, it just erased, what was there, replaced it with the defaults, and we actually tested it. Right? And so that doesn't change here, but what does change, because this does not have a battery. Woo hoo. This doesn't have a battery. That you can use that default comms button to reset the memory. Right? So if you hold it down while you're powering up, you reset the memory. Yeah. So that's cool because, like, with the other, controllers, we just took the battery out and waited, and, we lose, sometimes you do as this, as capacity you would short. But in any case, with this guy, since there's no battery, thank goodness. And that was a big problem with the l six. Now this is based on the l six. Right? But the l six, you know, they that battery they were using in the l six was designed for the l one, right, which didn't have a lot of memory compared to the l six. When you get to the l six and, you know, the memory is four or five, ten, 20 times bigger, a 100 times bigger, the battery wasn't lasting very long, maybe a couple of weeks. And that's not enough if you ship it a machine overseas. Right? So, you know, of course, people would not put the contact flash card in, and then then they would have a problem. They'd have a machine with no with no program. So in any case, with the l four, what they did they decided to do was, do something very similar to the Micrologix 1,000. If you remember the Micrologix 1,000 that came out in '94, it didn't have a battery because it had a built in EEPROM slash flash memory on the circuit board, what we call nonvolatile memory. And when you power it off, a capacitor just held the memory long enough so it could transfer over to nonvolatile. Never had to worry about an EEPROM. Never had to worry about, a battery. And so that's what they did with this unit,...