Automation Tech Talk

Building Systems with CompactLogix vs Micro800s: Automation Tech Talk for August 15, 2025


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Shawn meet's up with Giovanni Mendoza of GM  Automation and Controls in today's episode of Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:
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Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link. You'll also find Giovanni's website here.
Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Giovanni, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate you coming on. I know we've talked a lot about ControlLogix and CompactLogix over the months and years, But I recently saw you did a project, and I know your company and you guys do a lot of different projects. But I noticed you recently did a project on the micro eight hundreds. And I wanted to ask you, well, just a bunch of questions.
It just really got me curious. So if you don't mind, I would like to start off with why you chose the micro 800. And I just for so everybody knows, I teach both Logix, you know, Compact Control Logix micro 800. You know, I teach other brands as well. And, you know, I like them all.
But I a lot of times people who use Logix never use the micro 100. So this really piqued my interest. So I wanted to start, asking you and, really, before we get to that, tell us a little bit about what you do. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): Sure. Well, first thing, thanks a lot, Shawn, for, having me here. It's, it's an honor to be on your podcast. Yeah. So I am a systems integrator, essentially.
A, I'm a business owner here in California. And so we do a lot of, bakery automation, but we just dug into the, foam molding industry with this project. So that one was very cool. Yeah. You know, I know that's pretty much all we do as far as our typical projects, you know, logic stuff.
But we pretty much had to ask the customer what was their budget.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yep.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): And, you know, I have used the micro eight hundreds at home. And I know they were very, you know, versatile as far as what you can do with them. So and the cost was awesome. You know? The Yeah.
Very justifies the cost for the customer and whatnot. And so we sat down with the customer, and we were like, hey. Like, what are you guys expecting with this project? What are you expecting it to do? What do you wanna see on, like, a screen?
What is it that you guys want? And the application was very simple. It's a hydraulic press, essentially, that was, automated with a MicroLogix 1,100. But
Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): The entire program wiped out, and the person that programmed it was long gone and actually passed away many, many years ago. Ugh. The there was no records or anything that we can pretty much use for, essentially, just to get kinda, like, a picture of what was going on.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): So, thankfully, the process was very basic.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): And so, you know, the customer was a little bit on a tighter budget, and so we couldn't really justify the cost to put in, like, a CompactLogix in there. So we picked out the micro 800. And, the environment I know there's a lot of people that don't really like CCW for Mhmm. You know, many reasons. Sometimes the software is a little different in certain aspects.
Right?
Shawn Tierney (Host): It is. Yeah.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): But, it wasn't bad for the application. You know, we had a lot of inputs, but only a couple outputs. So that was pretty nice. And it was cool in the aspect that we we were able to combine the HMI and the PLC program into one file, right, all in CCW.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.
Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): So pretty much it you know,
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Automation Tech TalkBy Insights In Automation