Allen-Bradley PLCs
Most readers of this blog know that I go out of my way to be non-brand-specific and unbiased in my presentation of automation topics. So far I have refused to place advertisements for any manufacturer’s on this site, though I …
Author: Frank
Electrical Engineer and business owner from the Nashville, Tennessee area. I also play music, Chess and Go.
What is your Added Value?
Before I get into today’s topic I thought I’d mention why I haven’t posted as often lately. Since last September I have been spending a lot of time on the road; Denver, Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma, Philadelphia and Raleigh are …
Advantages and Disadvantages of Automation
Is automation “good” or “bad”? There are arguments on both sides of this issue. On one hand the cost of production on a per item basis is generally lower, on the other hand it is often said that automation takes …
More On Custom Machine Building
Over the past several years I’ve had the privilege of working with quite a few machine building companies. I’ve seen how they operate from the inside; some more successfully than others. In a series of guest posts while I was …
Serial Device Communications
Today’s post is in response to Amit’s question on a previous topic about leak testers. He asks “What is the process to send or receive data from a Cosmo leak unit tester?” Rather than address Cosmo specifically, I decided to …
Hey India!
Yesterday I received an invitation to attend the International Automation Exhibition 2014 to be held in Mumbai, India next October. Now as many who have read this blog know, I love to travel, especially to other countries. This May I …
Ladder Logic 207: Interrupts and Periodic Tasks
Today’s post is in response to Darko’s comment on my Ladder Logic 206: Scanning post. He mentioned that readers might want to learn a little bit about interrupts. It can be difficult to discuss this subject generically since different manufacturers …
Web and Converting Terms
The picture above is from a project I worked on back in 2007. I haven’t worked on a web project since then, but I thought I’d share a section of my book that discusses some of the terms used in …
More Startup and Debug
After spending the last several months working on some of my entrepreneurial ideas and teaching PLC programming classes, I just spent the last couple of weeks contracting on a machine and system startup/debug job. I feel very fortunate to have …
Fuses
Continuing the topic on motor control circuit design I started a few weeks ago, today’s topic is on fuses. Last week we discussed circuit breakers: these are circuit protection devices that can be reset when a fault such as a …