Finally…

It took about three months from when I was told my manuscript was accepted, but I finally got my contract Friday. As you can see from one of the proposed covers, the title will now be “Industrial Automation: Hands On”…. I lobbied to change it to Hands On Industrial Automation but was told that the way title searches work their way would be better. As I mentioned before, McGraw-Hill Professional Series will be the publisher.

As far as the progress of the book: I am complete through chapter five of ten as far as editing. The manuscript has to be turned over to MH by December 1 so I am hoping to be complete as far as text in about 2 weeks. I will be sending copies of the manuscript at that time to several people for technical review and hopefully will have that all done by mid November.

The toughest part is pictures… anything I use in the book has to have signed permission from whoever has rights to the picture. It seems easier to just try and take pictures myself and I will be doing that as much as possible… I am going to the Automation Fair in Philadelphia in early November and will be able to get a lot of component photos then. I still need some machine pictures; a press, injection molding machine, extrusion machine, a good automation line and several more. I will be calling some contacts soon but if anyone has any good pictures they could give me permission to use that would be awesome.

I could also use more technical reviewers… I have about 6 that have offered to help but can always use more. Also my last chapter is on applications… so far I have about 8 jobs that I have done in the past with pictures and pertinent details on hardware and techniques, but if anyone else has a job they have done that was interesting I would love to include it.


These are two more of the covers that MH has proposed. I sort of like the layout of the first one at the top of this post, but I have sent them some other pictures I have that are more mechanical to substitute for the water nozzle thing. Does anyone have any suggestions or preferences?

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Electrical Engineer and business owner from the Nashville, Tennessee area. I also play music, Chess and Go.