A few weeks ago I made a trip to Seattle to visit my daughter Yuki and her family. She used to work at Starbucks’ corporate headquarters, and among other projects was involved in the design and startup of the Roastery, an…
Author: Frank
Starbucks Roastery
Posted in Manufacturing, Material Handling, Sales and Marketing Tagged with: Boquete Coffee, Coffee, Starbucks, The Roastery
Automation Update December 2017
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. While things are going pretty well for me right now, I’ve had a really rough past few months. I think the longest I’ve gone before without posting was a couple of weeks maybe,…
Posted in Me, My Little Factory, Training Tagged with: Automation NTH, Automation Training, My Little Factory, training
Loving Your Automation
This week’s post is not really on automation, or anything technical. A couple of days ago I visited a local plant at the invitation of a consultant who is working with their management team to improve their processes. While this…
Posted in Business, Philosophies, Thoughts Tagged with: Loving Your Automation, pride in work, wiring
My New Trainers!
Well, its official. I have my first actual PLC trainers, in addition to the ones on the wall in My Little Factory. I think they’re awesome! They did take 8 weeks to build, but as more are made I think…
Posted in My Little Factory, PLCs, Trainers, Training Tagged with: Automation NTH, education, My Little Factory, PLC Trainers, training
Advanced PLC Training using Industrial Equipment
I just got back from teaching a class in California using the conveyor and training demo mentioned in my previous post on Automation NTH. I have discussed training quite a bit on this blog before, but I feel like this…
Live Sensors Webcast for Control Engineering
Hey, this Frank Lamb from Automation Primer. I will be doing a webcast for Control Engineering magazine on Tuesday, August 22, 2017 at 2 p.m. EST (1 p.m. CST, 11 a.m. PST, I can’t tell you MST because it’s a…
Posted in Me, Sensing, Vendors and Manufacturers Tagged with: Balluff, Carlo Gavazzi, Control Engineering, Frank Lamb, Sensor Webcast, sensors
Ladder Logic 208: System Routine 2
Today’s post is a continuation of the series on PLC Ladder Logic I started several years ago; for more of these post click on the PLC tab at the top of the site. In particular this continues my discussion of…
Posted in PLCs, Software & Programming Tagged with: Auto Cycle, ladder logic, PLC Pulse Train, PLCs, programming
Automation NTH
Over the past six years I’ve written posts about a lot of different companies; machine builders (Nalle Automation/NAS, Wright Industries/Doerfer, even my old company ACS), training companies (Automation Training and Udemy), and a whole bunch of controls manufacturers (check out…
Posted in Engineering, Machine Builders and Integrators, Training Tagged with: Automation NTH, conveyors, MTSU, PLC Trainers, training
Are Things too Complicated?
Today’s post is inspired by an ongoing adventure I have been having in the design and fabrication of My Little Factory. For those who haven’t been following my post since the beginning of this year, a great deal of my…
Posted in Automation Concepts, Conveyors, My Little Factory, Photoeyes, Sensors Tagged with: Banner, complicated, Keyence, My Little Factory, photoeyes
Super Vision!
As some of you may know, especially those of you who have known me since the 1990’s, machine vision used to be a major part of my career. I could conservatively say I was part of at least 40-50 vision…
Posted in Applications, gauging, Vendors and Manufacturers, vision Tagged with: machine vision, Mapvision
Most Recent Comments