An Industrial and Factory Automation Resource
Special machines and custom projects
Usually my work involves designing and building new equipment, or occasionally completely rebuilding and upgrading old machines. Last week I got an emergency call from an existing customer that their production line was down and they couldn’t get help quickly …
Most of the people who follow this blog know me as an instructor or trainer, and that is certainly what I have focused most of my efforts on lately. I do however still do some programming and systems integration work, …
Have you ever wondered why some seemingly simple systems integration jobs take so much time and money to complete? The picture above shows a section of a film wrapper build by a French company, Cermex. I would estimate that this …
Just an update on my PLC Trainer project. These are two of the Allen-Bradley Micrologix 1400 Trainers along with the Fischertechnik models I mentioned in my last post. The program and documentation for the Color Sorter, shown at left, is completed. …
Today’s post is a response to frustration. Some times when dealing with potential customers you waste a lot of time trying to save them money. They may want you to cut corners, spend a lot of your time (for free) …
How To Design And Build A Small Controls Project Read more »
This post is both an update on the status of “My Little Factory” and an article on some new fun trainers that I am working on. As you can see in the above picture, all of the hardware for the …
Today’s post concerns how sensor choices are made in real applications. I have written various posts on sensors in the past, and even participated in a Control Engineering webcast and forum last year on the topic. While I have covered …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Today’s post is about what goes on between an actual detection device and the input of a control system. In many control applications you don’t need to think about what goes on inside of a device. The signal is converted …
