PLC Articles – Software and Hardware
Since I started this blog in early 2011 I have written a lot of articles on PLCs. The PLC is a major part of many industrial facilities and machines, and indeed has been an important part of my career. Now …
Tag: Siemens
A Service Application – Bottle Blower
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 …
Automation Direct (Koyo) PLCs
This post is a continuation of a series I started a couple of weeks ago on PLC platforms. So far I have covered Allen-Bradley and Siemens, this week I am going to discuss the Automation Direct and Koyo platform. Koyo …
Siemens PLCs
Continuing the series I began last week with the Allen-Bradley PLC platform, this week I am discussing the Siemens family. My first exposure to Siemens PLCs was in the late 1990s when I customer wanted a quote on upgrading their …
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 …
Motor Control Design
Today’s topic is in response to Saravanan who posted a request last week on my “Panel Layout and Electrical Design” post of about a year ago. He asked “Thanks for the post. I want to learn about designing control circuits …
PLC Manufacturer Rankings
After spending the last couple of weeks teaching PLC programming, I decided to do a little research on the popularity of the different manufacturer’s platforms worldwide. I have been asked many times in the past who the biggest, most popular, …
Which Platform Should I Use?
When I worked for automation distributors I was required to promote and recommend only the products that the distributor sold. This sometimes caused a conflict of interest: is this the most appropriate solution for this application? The first distributor I …