Mitsubishi MELSEC in Queensland industry
Mitsubishi Electric MELSEC PLCs have a strong presence in manufacturing, food processing, and material handling across Australia. The Q series has had a long installed life and remains in service on many sites, while iQ-R is the current platform for new installations.
MELSEC controllers are frequently found as machine-level PLCs on individual pieces of equipment: conveyors, palletisers, processing units, and specialist machinery imported from Japanese and Asian equipment manufacturers. This means they appear on sites where the primary plant runs a different PLC brand, requiring a control engineer who can work across multiple platforms in the same facility.
GX Works and the MELSEC environment
GX Works2 covers Q and FX3 series programming, and is the environment we work in directly. GX Works3 covers the iQ-R and FX5U platforms, built on a related project structure and programming approach - our Q and FX series experience transfers across when a site is running the newer generation.
Working across Mitsubishi generations
A number of CQ sites are still running Q and FX series hardware alongside newer iQ-R installations elsewhere in the same facility. Being comfortable working across both generations is useful on sites part-way through a platform transition, or where older machine-level PLCs sit alongside newer plant-wide control.