Clay B.

I have built several over the years using extruded aliuminum. Usually can build one for a couple of hundred bucks. Most of the parts you need are bolt on. Take a look here for some of the parts you have to work with. http://modular.en.ec21.com/Connectors--3079212.html

Jim you may have thought of this but I did not see it in your detail. You say you are using a hall effect sensor for engine speed. THat is going to be a fast switch and is going to require a high speed input. That said I think AB and Siemens should have soemthing that will get the job done. Take a look at the Micorlogix 1400 from AB and the S7-200 from Siemens. Both will require some expansion cards. The only other one I can think of that could do something like this is the Unitronics.

PLCMentor, I am right down the road from you, I am suprised with the support you got. Not sure if the vendor you dealt with is the same I deal with but my local supprt has been great. In the loacl supprt area I have been lucky in that I get good AB and Siemens support. On the Siemens side my local rep has loaned me several componets so I could test my crack pot ideas. The oen thing I really like about Siemens and this is on the S7-200's mostly because that is what we use the most the guys in Johnson City Ten. are a big help on the phone. An example: One of weight controller suppiers said his product has Profibus abilities. I found and proved with the help of my local rep. He brought in a tool that I could not justify buying and we proved the weight controller was scambling the messages.

It ususally is not as painfull as you imagine. There are a lot of shops that are UL listed. Just do a search in your area for intergrators and panel builders.For me I still design the panels, and I use the same panel shop for the non-UL certified panels as well as the certified ones. We just add to the panel cost if the customer requires the certification. I would say over 70% of our customers simply require UL componets and do not require the panel itself be certified.

While we generally do not get the million dollar job, we intergrate our systems into them. That said in the past year ALL of the requested specs that involved AB PLC's required Ethernet/IP. In fact one customer was convertering over to Ehternet/IP from Devicenet. I asked why the conversion and their answer is when it runs it runs...when it breaks it really breaks. One thing I do know. On the plant maintenance level techs seem a lot less intimitated by Ethernet/IP than Devicenet.

Unless you are going to do a lot of UL Certified panels I would call around to your local panel builders and find one that can certify the panels for you. Maintaining UL Certification can be costly and getting setup even more costly.

personally I think the aplication dictates which drive is best. I noticed no one metioned AC Tech. For simple start stop with maybe a jog function or 2 you can not beat these for the price. I do like the Powerflex when I am using an AB platform but if it is a Siemens platform I prefer to use their drives. On web handling machines I found that the SSD's were really easy to setup and trouble shoot. I have not used an ABB in years so I do not really have an option of them. I will say I have one brand I find to be a total piece of junk for the cost and that is the Square D Altivar. This drive in my opinion has the most convoluted comand structure I have ever seen.

I have a friend who is doing kinda what you are talking about. When he had his house built it was wired for security (window/ door sensors). He never had it tied in though. So now he is using a unitroinics plc (built in touch screen) and has wired his sensors into it. Cool part is when a sensor tripps he knows exactly which one. He is working on the internet coms now. For the price it is pretty slick. Note: His excuse/reason for doint it is his 2 year old son is getting good at opening doors and such. This way he knows exactly what is opened.

Every major PLC maker has a line of the "Smart" Relays. Even Siemens has the Logo! line. For really small jobs they are real good. What your talking about you could use most any of them. Just make sure you get the one with the correct I/O voltage. You will probably want 120 vac for a home project.

cool sight Bob. Thanks

Well if you use the lightscribe. Have something else to do in the mean time. Its real cool for labeling disks but takes forever. I still use it though. I can give my customers a disk with a label that doesn't come off.

Thanks Crossbow. We just hired a new Service Tech and this can be real handy.

You may Simplify it a bit. Siemens makes a weight module called Siwarex MS module. This module comes with the ablity to handle your batching functions. If you have to use more than 1 load cell then you can combine your load cells in a Siwarex JS box. Depending on the resolution you need, a converter can become an issue. Contact your local vendor for more info. These modules have alot of built in features that make building a system alot easier.

I use AVG and have no complaints. One thing I do is run a complete system scan each night starting at 1 am. The reason I do this is I found alot of tracker bots on my laptop. These would try and run at the same time slowing my downloads and other ativities down. AVG will see these and tag them as Warning's so you can delete them. I am not sure if other virus software does this but I have found it to be a real handy feature with AVG.

I posted this over at PLC.Net It is a problem I ran into on my last project and I am curious if anyone else has seen something like this. I was able to create code to work around it, now I just trying to understand it. I just completed a project that thru me a curve ball I have never seen before. I am wondering if anyone else has seen something like this. I connected a Rice Lake 920i to a S7-300 PLC thru Profibus DP. The Rice Lake is a generic slave to the S7-300. The Rice Lake requires 4 words consistent messaging. The message form is first word command in Hex second word is parameter in Hex third and forth word can be either DINT or Real. The 3 word is MSW forth is LSW. Commands and Parameters are predefined for the Rice Lake. Curve ball: If I sent my messages from my S7-300 faster than once every 250 mil seconds the return from the Rice Lake would be garbled. What I mean by garbled is this: I would alternate between sending the message First word hex130, second word hex 64, third and forth 1.0 to 8.0 depending on the recipe value I wanted to load into Setpoint 100. The next message would be First word hex140, second word hex 62, third and forth 0; this would tell me the value in Setpoint 98 I would alternate between these 2 messages every scan. I would read the return on every scan. What I expected to happen was when I sent 140,64,1 I would get back 140,status value of Rice Lake,1 When I sent 130,62,0 I would expect back 130,status value of Rice Lake, value of Setpoint 98 (hex62). What I would ACTUALLY get back would be 140, some unknown value, and either the value I sent or the value of Setpoint 98, the other message back would be 130,some unknown value, and either the value I sent or the value of Setpoint 98. Like I said the messaging was getting garbled. The only time I received consistent and expected responses was when I spaced out my messages by 250ms.I would send my first message, wait 250ms send my second wait 250ms repeat. Well having a .5 second plus delay between my action reactions was not acceptable so I had to create an alternate method. This does not correct the messaging garbling; it just allows me to work around it. Has anybody else seen something similar? Also Note: I know the accuracy of my echoes because I got my local Siemens vendor to bring in a Profibus sniffer and we could see the messaging on Profibus in its native form. And in order of send receive. That’s how we figured out the garbling and how much delay we needed to get ride of it.

Thanks Ken, I was not sure of the best place to put it.

I use a desk top model from Panduit. The label software is in my pc. Panduit has a wide range of labels including what you are talking about. Also you can use some pretty big rolls. My favorite feature is my Cad add on. Basically I can take my wire numbers and other labels directly from my drawings to the printer and start printing. Label cost is pretty competive also. Another thing I think looks cool but have not tried out yet is a new media they have that will make switch legends. My vendor is going to be bringing me some samples next week to try out. Model number TPD43MY Here is a link to it. http://www.panduit.com/Products/ProductOve...recName=TDP43MY

This is a rule I apply to any PLC I am working on. No matter the brand. When I was on the plant side and not the OEM side I would keep these data blocks in the program and have them labeled as Debug. I would elve them in the program so I could search for them later. All of the other programers would pick from here if they had to do a tempoary fix. This way others could find them Now on the OEM side of the fence I delete them as soon as I have the project completed so I can just do a program compare and see if my customer has been maki9ng any changes.

Now there is irony for you. I just left a Project/Maintenace Engineering position to take on a Intergrator position to reduce stress and get some sleep at night.... As for the "sheepskin" I only have an ASEE so I have hit those doors before. Been my experience, the bigger the company the more important the degree. I was recently called by a company that I had done contract work for in the past. Even though I helped with the design and construction of the equipment they are currently running,I am underqualified for a senior engineering position. Accordng to them I can not have an engineering position, but I do qualify, according to them for an entry level maintenace position. Needless to say I do not work for said company. I am listed as an Electrical Controls Engineer with my current employer and I design and build control panels and all the other fun stuff that goes along with it. I tested for this position. Long and short..... BSEE= generally faster track to higher pay ASEE= get you there slower and your options tend to be more limited. If I had to do over or may still do it..... I would get my BSEE.....I would also get a really nice frame to put it in......then throw it in the bottom drawer of my desk with all my other certificates and diplomas... Just remember one thing when you get on the job... If you have a BSEE or an ASEE you are still going to look as dumb as a brick.... Find someone you can learn from.... No matter how much you study in school some really frustrating OJT will be yours wherever you go to work...

Once you have your PLC... Build something. What I mean is find something that requires a sequence. A machine you have seen. stoplights...whatever The point is start simple then work you way up. Trying to get a sequence of events to happen when you want them and in a certain order is what programing is all about. Just knowing the difference between XIC and XIO is not enough.

2 cents worth...... Your customer may find that this is not going to give them the answers they are looking for. If the reason they want this is to find a broken heater temp it may not work. If one heater is broken then it can still be heated by the other heaters around it. I would strongly suggest a system using current detection If heater is broken then current goes to zero. Problem is obvious. If current drops IE...element has parcial short to ground this can be detected. If element is has dead short to ground current meter can shut circuit off and you do not end up playing find the short game. In injection molding this is used all the time. Some of the mold machines I have worked on had well over 100 heating elements in thiem and this system let you find the problem in just seconds. Usually it took you lopnger to walk over to the machine than it did to trouble shoot. The other plus side here is that the zone did not have to go "cold" before you detected the problem.

Not sure if this help much because my start is pretty much an uncommon approach. I started in this feild because as a kid I was given a PLC to play with by my father. I told him I want a robot for christmas. Back then you could get one from Radio Shack. Well christams got here and instead of the robot I got a TI-5 PLC he had removed from the plant he was working at. The plant had upgraded to TI 520's. He gave me this PLC and said build your "own" robot. Took me over a year but I did build a six axis robot with a 28" reach. MY point to this look into my sorted past is this. To build the robot I "played" around with the PLC to understand how it worked. I also worked hard to understand how the program related to the componets on the robot. Just understand this is NOT a field for the easily frustrated or the faint of heart. It takes time, time and more time and when you really start to understand something it becomes obsolete. That said what your doing now wll get your foot in the door, what you do after that will keep you in a job. The learning never ends it will always be continuos. Since you want to learn on your own, and where you are currently working does not have PLC's for you to work with I suggest you get one of your own. Used ones can be found on E-Bay all the time. and play with it. Think up a process, then try and create it. Start simple and work your way up. As for the do over you asked about.... I wished I would have got my BSEE right after I got my ASEE. While I honestly believe you learn more on the job than anywhere else, the 4 year degree tends to to get you into the higher paying areas faster.

I ran into a similar problem a while back with a Compac. What I did was remove the harddrive and copy it to my new laptop as a virtual drive. I then used VM Ware to run a virtual machine of my old laptop. I still run this today so whenever I need to run the older software stored on it I can. This gives the advantages of running a newer machine that hinks it is an old one. Since I am not an IT guy I used the GEEK Squad at my local Best Buy to set it up.

Well atleast you know the automation guys is not over worked. HR probably stays busy though.

I would have not thought that was even possible. Talk about a big set of b***s.