Maintenance and Troubleshooting Book

My new book is out! The title as you can see above is Maintenance and Troubleshooting in Industrial Automation, and it is for sale at Amazon and other bookstores.

This is the fifth book I have produced that has an ISBN, and the third that I have self-published under my company name.

I have posted before about what is involved in writing and publishing books, so I won’t go into that here. Suffice it to say It takes a lot of time to do, and you will probably never make enough to justify the time unless you write a best seller. This is very unlikely for technical books.

The book is 384 pages in length, paperback and has over 400 illustrations, most in color. There are 37 exercises on different topics, along with a final troubleshooting exercise based on a machine described in the book. Answers are in the back of the book.

Following is the table of contents:

10 Introduction

11 What is: NTH University?

12 Strategy

13 Maintenance

15 Machine/System Theory

20 Mechanical

25 Pneumatics

36 Hydraulics

39 Electrical 

53 Analog Signal Processing

55 Communications

63 Data                      

68 Input Devices and Sensors

87 Instrumentation and P&IDs

96 Machine Safety Systems

108 Motor Control

117 Motion Control

121 Robotics

127 Machine Vision

145 Programmable Controllers (PLCs)

209 Machines and Subsystems

225 Visualization and Notification(HMI/SCADA)

229 Operational Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)    

234 Troubleshooting

239 Mechanical Tools and Techniques

252 Electrical Tools and Techniques

266 Understanding Schematics and Documentation

267 The “Sweet Machine”

314 Industrial Software

329 A Troubleshooting Journey

359 Appendices

383 About the Author

The book is not particularly cheap, it lists for $75 and is sold on Amazon for anywhere from $56.41 to $68.85 as I look today. But it is a pretty thick book.

Something that makes this book a little different: it evolves. I have separated the book into 24 separate documents on my website in the Automation Academy, and have already modified a section (Input Devices and Sensors) and added a document to another (added a Cognex document to the Machine Vision section). Eventually if there are enough changes I will probably put out a revision. You have to be careful when you do that to not change the total length much.

One of the major reasons I published this book is so I can use it in my classes. I teach classes for plants across North America, mostly for PLC and HMI programming. I have also taught various custom maintenance and engineering courses, and this book contains a lot of that material.

Contact me by e-mail (flamb@automationllc.com) or on Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/in/franklamb/) if you have questions on the book or any other topics!