Tag Structures and Dotfields
Today’s post is in response to an e-mail I received asking for my thoughts on Tag Structure. In part, George Steel wrote: Great site, thanks for all your efforts. I am working on positioning my org to move from RS500 …
Category: Trades
Jobs in the automation field
The IEM Dilemma
First I’d like to apologize for a term I’ve mis-used in the past, that of the OEM. I’ve always considered manufacturers of specific types of industrial equipment to be “OEM”s, or Original Equipment Manufacturers. After looking carefully at the various …
Teaching and Consulting
Four years ago I relaunched my old company, Automation Consulting Services, Inc. as Automation Consulting, LLC. For the first year or so I spent a lot of time contracting for machine builders and engineering firms, mostly writing PLC and HMI/SCADA …
Fieldservers and Protocol Converters
Today’s topic derives from a project I have become involved in in my “spare” time. Lately I have been spending a lot more time teaching classes. My project in Miami is mostly complete, so I have been able to get …
Building The Machine: A Bedtime Story
The following story is from my book Industrial Automation: Hands On (McGraw-Hill, 2013). I wrote it to illustrate how a machine or production line is concepted, purchased, designed, built and delivered. This is a pretty typical description of the procedures …
The True Cost of Custom Machinery
Its been about two years since I made Mastering the Machine available on this website. For those who haven’t read it, it is a short e-book describing the process of concepting, quoting, building and installing custom machinery. I have also …
The Big Toys
Hello from Atlanta, Georgia where I am about to teach a 4 day class on Siemens’ TIA Portal. I have been away from home for two weeks trying to finish up my project down at American Beverage Depot in Miami …
Wonderware
As many of you know from reading this blog, I spend about 40% of my time teaching software programming classes for Automation Training, a Canadian company. I started out teaching the Allen-Bradley SLC and ControlLogix platforms and Siemens Step 7 …
Non-Native Devices: .eds and .gsd files
When designing a control system, sometimes it becomes necessary or advantageous to communicate with devices that were not made by the PLC manufacturer. If these devices need to be placed on an Ethernet, DeviceNet or Profibus network there are methods …
Finding Project Resources
When mapping out a new machinery or system project it is critical that the correct decisions are made before beginning design. The choices of products, vendors and service providers can make or break a project before it even gets off …