More Fun with Enclosures
Two days before the tornado in March, I wrote a post about the enclosures I planned to market as part of my PLC training kit. With all of the turmoil and working out of my house for a few months, …
Category: Hardware
Mechanical and electrical hardware
Ladder Logic 404: VFD Encoder Control/Siemens
Today’s post doubles as a Ladder Logic series post and an introduction to the last videos in the Siemens Step 7 Odyssey series on my YouTube channel. Last week I covered a bit about how a Variable Frequency Drive interfaces …
PLC Drive/VFD Control
Over the past few days I have received a lot of questions about drive or VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) control using a PLC, especially in my Facebook group. It can be very difficult to answer complex questions on Facebook, especially …
Advanced HMI
Typically I don’t do unsolicited free advertisements for companies or websites, but I really need to make an exception here for Advanced HMI. Advanced HMI provides a FREE open source HMI platform that runs on a PC. While they do …
Piezoelectric, Electromagnetic, and Electrostatic Devices: A Comparison
Today’s post is a guest post by SensComp, a manufacturer of ultrasonic sensors. They also provided this cool infographic: Which Is Better? Comparing Piezoelectric, Electrostatic, And Electromagnetic Devices For your electronic sensor application, selecting the right equipment matters. Do you …
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Videos and Online Training
As I’ve mentioned in my last few posts, I’ve been creating a lot of videos lately, and have been working on various online courses. The picture above is a Camtasia (the software I use for video editing) screen shot of …
Ladder Logic 309: Allen-Bradley Produced-Consumed Tags (Video)
Today’s post is a continuation on Jason Lafever’s questions on PLC to PLC communications. PLCs often have a need to send messages to each other, and all have some method of directly sending a message to read or write tags …
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Ladder Logic 308: Allen-Bradley’s MSG (Message) Instruction – Video
Today’s video is in response to a post I put on my Facebook automation forum, Automation Training. Jason Lafever asked if I would cover a bit on Allen-Bradley’s MSG (Message) Instruction, and cover Produced-Consumed Tags. I decided to split these …
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Ladder Logic 307: Data Average and Archive
Today’s post is in response to Yusuf Shaikh, who asked a question in a Facebook forum on PLCs. He asked “How to calculate average of drive current tag for every 15 seconds in Micrologix 1400 PLC?“ Of course there are …
Working from Home
A friend of mine, Shawn Tierney from The Automation Blog challenged us on Linked In to post a picture of our hobby space, the place where we spend our time at home when we aren’t working. In my case, since …