This section will detail what you can expect to pay for each component and we will come up with an estimated project budget. Many of the Rockwell components can be acquired on eBay for a fraction of their original cost. As we are building our control system for learning purposes only, there is no need to buy brand-new equipment. Of course, when building a real-world control system, you would want to purchase new original equipment from Rockwell and not use parts from unknown or untrusted sources such as eBay. I will be using the prices of components on eBay at the time that this book was written to estimate the cost of components.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, if you are buying used components, you can either try to purchase the components separately or try to purchase an entire used rack that has all the I/O cards and components already included.
The following section will detail the minimum ControlLogix specific...