McGraw-Hill, Reviewers and the Final Manuscript
In last weeks post, I mentioned that I had made a trip to New York to meet with McGraw-Hill. I had already planned a trip to Philadelphia for the A-B Automation Fair, so I made a grand tour of the …
Author: Frank
Electrical Engineer and business owner from the Nashville, Tennessee area. I also play music, Chess and Go.
Panel Layout and Electrical Design
I had planned on writing a bit about my meeting with the publisher last week, but I received a comment on a post from about a year and a half ago on Controls Specifications. Doug asked me to cover a …
Automation Fair
As part of my picture-collecting for the book I decided to attend the Allen-Bradley Automation Fair again this year. I have attended the last few years in Orlando, Chicago and Nashville; this year it was in Philadelphia. There are always …
The Future of Automation
As I mentioned in my post last week, I recently read a few articles on the future of automation and manufacturing. One of the most prolific writers on the future of industry and manufacturing automation trends is Jim Pinto, who …
Kaizen
A major element of Lean methodology is Kaizen, or “improvement”. The term can refer to a continuous process or to a planned improvement event concentrating on a specific target. From the Industrial Automation: Hands On manuscript: Continuous improvement, or Kaizen, …
Ladder Logic 102: Organization
*Note: This post was written in October of 2012. Since that time I have written a number of other posts on ladder logic you may find useful. These are listed below for your convenience: Ladder Logic 201: Inputs (March 2013) …
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”…. …
CE Marking and the Machinery Directive
Last week I covered some of the US safety standards that apply to to machine building. As Tony mentioned in his comment on the subject, not all machines stay in the USA. This week I am going to discuss European …
Safety Standards
When designing machinery for automated processes, one of the most important factors to consider is the safety of the personnel who will be using the equipment. Of secondary importance is the protection of the machinery itself. Due to the movement …
Custom Machine Builders
Sometimes its hard to come up with topics that I haven’t already covered in this blog. I have already discussed custom machinery in various different topics over the last couple of years, but today I decided to just do a …