How to gain Heavy Industrial and PLC experience

[Bobster]

We had old hartmann and braun hard wired logic, some of it still in use.

 

[Knobhead]

Even new PLC controlled kilns would use Logicon 1 for the Double Block and Proove.

The foundry had one plant with H&B.

 

[Bobster]

The foundry had one plant with H&B.

Did that also have loads of jumpered wires hanging out of which where and everywere? Lol

 

[grantr37]

Any questions about PLC's Timbits just ask

 

[Guest123]

I dont know how the well versed would view this course but wanting to have something to back up knowledge gained through experienece, I recently took this course to gain a bit of background on PLC's.

Scantime Online Course - Introduction to PLCs


I found it very informative TBH and will consider the other courses in the future.

 

[grantr37]

I dont know how the well versed would view this course but wanting to have something to back up knowledge gained through experienece, I recently took this course to gain a bit of background on PLC's.

Scantime Online Course - Introduction to PLCs




I found it very informative TBH and will consider the other courses in the future.

what kind of certificate printout did you get from them? they have a siemens one there, could be used to prove siemens experience for the pesky agencies that don't seem to want to accept a 7 year old college certificate.....

 

[vaughant]

No S5 would be my only issue with the course advertised but for £40 you can't go wring,S5 is like an old computer system really and a pig to get connected to if you haven't used it much before but it's still a very very common system and you'll see it in a lot of pre 1998 machinery,I quite like it but it's a bit glitchy and slow and you do need to have a clue about flags,timers,set/reset flags and general logic control but it's not impossible to learn.
S7 is a superb system that's extremely popular right now,has been for many years and not due to be phased out for a long time.
Hardware faults are very rare on Siemens,the worst you ever get is a program stop or a comms fault,neither of which take much to figure out.
S7 is great to fault find on,easy to get online and quick to use,only drawbacks are it can be a bit long winded to get to the origin of the fault,especially if it's been converted over from S5 which is common,then you end up with sections in STL only which is a pain to read but if it's S7 from the start it's great.
Allen Bradley is very easy to read and change,but again an ar5e to get online with unless its a dedicated laptop pre set up.
LOGO is very basic but fine and rs logix is a nice easy way of viewing a particular system.
grant37r put some interesting info up there although I doubt the average industrial spark would get too involved with pcb and EEPROM much but still important to know these things.
90% of industrial is using the monitor as a fault finding tool which I love!!!

 

[Knobhead]

For fault finding give me Modsoft anyday. The search and trace is so quick to use.

 

[vaughant]

For fault finding give me Modsoft anyday. The search and trace is so quick to use.

Rs logix is like that,you just type in say "conveyor 4" and it gives you every occurrence of conveyor 4 within the program.
Siemens S7 is a touch more tricky ie you need an input/output number or m code etc but you can search that in any fc (function call) of the program.
S5 is more tricky as you need to sometimes be in a different port or CPU of the base unit as it won't communicate otherwise,can throw a novice off.
I suppose it's what your used to really,as long as you understand how it works your in with 1/2 a chance.

 

[vaughant]

Typical s5 drawing

Will put some S7 up tommorow.

 

[Knobhead]

I've been trying to get a screen shot of Modsoft with no joy. You've given me an idea, go back to basics, print and then scan.
I always try to over complicate the simple.

View attachment 15148

 

[Knobhead]

years ago they used to teach in college using ladder diagrams and everything was coded in low level OP code(machine code), hand coded with a great deal more thinking about timers+WDT's, interrupts, jumps, no ops,registers, memory locations, pointers etc.....now everything gets programmed using SDK's (Software Development Kits- AKA compilers) and high level language, usually C, so that a lot of the issues with different PLC chips get ironed out by the use of manufacturer designed programming software tools instead of relying on in depth learning for each new device....the new PLC's and microcontrollers all have inbuilt memory and timers, which the older ones had on a separate card....

I think you should read The History of the PLC by Dick Morley

Good reading for anyone.

 

[vaughant]

Some S7 for ya!!!

ladder

Fbd

 

[grantr37]

have you read the old book "the mighty micro" by christopher evans (1979) its quite interesting what he thought would happen back then, as a lot of it did.... worth a look for interest purposes.....will be on ebay and amazon...

 

[grantr37]

back when processors were called "Transputers"