Our Partnership History with Mitsubishi Electric Automation

This article originally appeared in our August 2016 Newsletter.

This month, we continue our celebration of 25 years in business by recognizing the partnerships that have allowed us to be successful.  We have been doing work for Mitsubishi Electric since 1995 and became an Authorized System Integrator in 2010.

“Mitsubishi Electric hardware is fantastic.  The forward compatibility is terrific, upgrading is simple, their servos and drives are second to none,” said Sam Hoff, CEO of Patti Engineering. “It is nice to be able to represent such a great product line in the marketplace and see the customer’s reaction to the performance of their products.”

Patti Engineering has done around 500 projects involving Mitsubishi Electric.  Our first project back in 1995 was on the paint line for Diamond Star Motors, which was a joint venture between Mitsubishi Electric and Chrysler in Normal, IL.  We became an Authorized System Integrator in 2010, at the request of Mark Werthman who had recently moved to Mitsubishi Electric and knew Patti Engineering would be a great fit for the program.  We had the privilege of getting to know the company even better when Sam Hoff was invited on a trip to Japan in 2014 to visit their Headquarters and visit Tokyo, Nagoya, and Himeji.

In recent years, our engineers have worked on all kinds of Mitsubishi Electric projects, including Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) platform conversions A to Q and An to Q, designing operator interfaces on GOT series Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs), and integrating MES/IT modules.  They have integrated various Mitsubishi Electric products like simple and advanced motion controllers from QD75 to MT Works, J3 and J4 servos, Q and iQ series PLCs, and A & FX platforms.

In one such project, our engineers upgraded obsolete control systems on multiple UBE Injection Molding Machines (IMMs) from the legacy A Series PLC to the new Mitsubishi Electric Q Series PLC control systems. At the completion of the project, the large automotive customer gained the many advantages of the technological advances in automation while extending the usable life of valuable capital equipment.

In another project, Patti Engineering fabricated, programmed and commissioned control systems incorporating Mitsubishi Electric PLCs, HMIs, and Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) to carry out recipe process functions for a new food factory.

In 2014, Patti Engineering provided expertise on a project that built complex machine lines requiring high-precision programming of Mitsubishi Electric robots and PLCs.  Since that project, we have continued to educate ourselves on Mitsubishi Electric robots.  Several of our engineers have attended training and attended the Robotics Summit this past November.  “The servos and mechanical aspects of the robots are really strong,” said Sam Hoff.

If you haven’t seen Mitsubishi Electric robots professionally, you might remember them as the robot in Jurassic Park that flips the dinosaur eggs.  That robot is actually still running in their Vernon Hills location!

In addition to integrating projects for our customers, we’ve also had the pleasure of working with Mitsubishi Electric directly a couple of times.  One time, we designed HMI screens.  Recently, we worked with Mitsubishi Electric on a project to create “Master” device function blocks for IO-Link.  You can read more about that here.

Mitsubishi Electric views Patti Engineering as one of the premier systems integrators in the Mitsubishi Electric Systems Integrator Program. The company and its engineering team brings a wealth of product and application knowledge to any project involving the integration of Mitsubishi Electric Factory Automation products. Our partnership has been rewarding for both businesses. Patti Engineering’s experience with our technology ensures success in every implementation.

More Info about our Mitsubishi Electric Expertise