CompactLogix Gen 5: Automation Tech Talk for August 26, 2025

Shawn discusses the Fifth (and current) 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-1/ - Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-2/ - Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-3/ - Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-4/ - Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/ Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Hope you are all doing well today. Please let me know if you can hear me and see me okay. Everything's looking good on my side, though, so I hope you're off to a great day. I was I had a, actually, a special guest scheduled to come on today. But at the last minute, then a customer called, and, he had to go out and do a sales call or a service call. And, yeah. So these things happen. I mean, I would like I was telling them, customers come first, and, lunchtime tech talks come second. That's always the case. But in any case, we hope to get him back on. I didn't put all his information in the show because I know, you know, these these kind of folks, you guys out there are very busy, and, you can't make every show. So I also wanna say hi to Rob in the chat. We have the chat coming in from both, YouTube and, LinkedIn. But when I reply, like, hey, Rob, it only went to YouTube. So in any case, okay. Rob confirms. Thank you, Rob. You're like my producer today. In any case, let's go ahead and get in today's show. The first thing I wanna do, though, is let me click here. And I am offering this is a a special for, well, we're almost in fall now. Right? So I'm offering a special. I'm gonna offer any viewer of the show, and you can give this to somebody you know because I know a lot of you are already experts. A lot of people watch this show are already automation experts, so you would not need this. But you can gift this to one person. It is a, a 20% discount on any of my courses that are $99 or more, and, that is, that goes for the bundles as well. And I do this I always do this for returning customers. So let's say a student takes a PLC course, that he wants to take an HMI course, I always offer a 20% discount to on their next course. And, of course, they can always upgrade to the bundle for the difference in price. But I thought, you know, I wanna do something. You know? This show is only a couple weeks old, so I wanted to do something, special for you guys who found the show here early. This not only goes for those who are watching live, but also for those who are watching after the fact. All you have to do and you can see here the automationschool.com. I got the email you can use. I got the voice mail. I got the you can actually submit a form to send me an email if that's easier, and you can even book a time. Now this also applies to, group enrollments. So a lot of people don't know this, but I work with a lot of Fortune 500 companies, and we enroll, you know, five, ten, 20 people at a time. There's an additional discount off of the sale prices when they do that. And so we'll also have that 20% off just to get started for anybody who has a group. Now a group is three or more. Some people like to say a group is two. Two is a peer. So, like, we we we did clearly have a group of three or more more students. But in any case, we work with a lot of Fortune 500 companies in, actually, for for going on a decade now. So in any case, you'll see somewhere here I have all the logos of all the different companies. Actually, I think it's on the course pages. That said, I wanted to show you guys something else too. In, the automationblog.com, you guys now move this to a new server. You know, we're having a little, you know, moving pains. You know, some things are working great. Some things are are, still, still working on. Every once in a while, I have to talk to them about some speed issues. But in any case, of course, this is your free resource for over 2,000 articles of videos. And I wanted to show you, though, what this show will look like when it's done. So here's the, show from yesterday. So we have the video. You can watch here. Right? Then you have the audio. Right? And this is the automation tech talk audio, so I rebranded the automation news headlines. And then I've been you know, it takes an hour or two to get the transcripts, but these are actually pretty good transcripts. Much better than what you get from YouTube, because you have a little time stamps and everything. And so this is more conversational. So I've been trying to do this for the automation podcast and, this show, and it's so far, it's going well. Cost this does cost extra, but, in any case, if we could get you guys, you know, if you ever missed the live show and you wanna catch the replay, you could do it on YouTube. You can do it on LinkedIn, but you also get that full, nice, easy to read transcript. And I know some people would rather read, especially first thing in the morning than than watch. So in any case so with that, let's get over to what we're gonna talk about today. This is the backup plan I had here. Let's go to present mode. And so what I'm showing here, we're gonna talk about the fifth generation of CompactLogix. And what I'm showing here are free pro PowerPoint slides from Rockwell. I spent a whole weekend going because I had this rush order come in. A vendor wanted me to go teach their, their, customer how to program their PLCs. Right? And I was like ecstatic to do that, but I I had to spend the whole weekend, taking all kinds of slides and putting them together. I wanted to give this the customer something that they could keep, something that wasn't something that was free to the public. Right? So in this case, Rockwell gives these slides away for free, and, they're all copyrighted by Rockwell. But in any case, you can call your Rocktell, Rockwell distributor and ask for a copy of these. Again, if they have any good people left, they'll they'll have this archive like I did. I have, I don't know, twenty five years archived before I started my own business. But in any case, I was just sending somebody, so we do the Automation Museum podcast over the weekends. Haven't released any episodes yet, but I've been sending the guests when they come on. They're like, you know, I wish I had something on this old product that that old I've even helped companies. They're like, oh, I can't find this old manual. I'm like, yeah. I got it. So in any case, I I did I did, post this for those of you in my compact basics course, CompactLogix course over at the automation school. I did put the this up there in appendix a so you can grab a copy of this. But if you're not in my courses, just ask your Rockwell rep. If they're worth their salt, they'll have all these presentations free from Rockwell. But I thought we had used this. I thought it would be good because all my you can see behind me let me go back full screen here. You see behind me my, all my, you know, high end or, actually, every one of my CompactLogix except for the one, two, and three generations I showed you earlier in the series, they're all wired in the trainers here at the automation school. And, again, we're we're good to do four, five, six, seven people. If you wanna send them in, we can actually do up to eight people if you wanna send them in to learn Logix or s seven. We can also do the HMIs. But, you know, you wanna definitely in the falls, the Berkshires is a great place to visit. And, we have within three miles all the major hotels. Just go to automationschool.com forward slash live. You'll see all that. Plus, we get the Norman Rockwell Museum. We have Jim Jiminy Peak. We have, Mount Greylock. But in any case, let's get back to what we're talking about here. And, let's see. Wrong one. I wanna be up there. Okay. Great. Where The Berkshires is about an hour east of Albany, New York. It's officially in Massachusetts, and I'm in the center of The Berkshires in Downtown Pittsfield. So, actually, this building used to be an old paper mill. So in any case and it houses a, a newspaper now, but I don't know if they print here or not. In any case, thank you for asking where I was located. And, the automationschool.com forward slash live, I got links to all the attractions, links to all the nearby hotels, Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn, you know, all the big ones you can think of we have within three miles of the site. And, you know, one of the things I do that, you know, of, and, you know, that, you know, big corporation can't is, you know, if you wanna learn Siemens and Rockwell the same day, I can do that. Right? The other thing is, if you wanted to start at, like, twelve noon because you wanna drive in, like, I've had people drive in from Pennsylvania. You know, if you wanna drive in from some place that's four or five hours away, we can start at twelve, 01:00 and then finish the next morning, right, or do two or three days in a row. We also not only have the physical trainers, we also have factory IO. I'm a factory IO reseller. So if you blow through all those, we've got even more. And trust me, you won't finish all the factory IO in a day. That's for sure. So in any case, back to generation number five of, CompactLogix. And this is a '50 three eighty. Now, again, I wanna I think it was Dean yesterday who said that the fifty three seventies, the l twos and l threes, were just recently marked as active mature. And at the time, I was like, why would they do that? ...