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Guest jonnie75

Education for controls engineering

10 posts in this topic

Needing some input from experienced people on what would be the best college major for becoming a controls engineer. Hoping to deal with PLC's, SCADA, HMI's and PC interfacing. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

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Tell you what happened to me... I started going to a Purdue campus extension here in Indiana for a EE program. But they did not cover any PLCs or robotics course, only circuit level design jargon. But I learned basic electronics, and a programming language so I understood the basics of programming in general. I think the thing that really applied is when we learned the 7400 family of chips. All the AND, NOT, an OR logic gates you could make using the 7400 TTL logic chips?. Then I looked around and found that ITT had an Automation Manufacturing Engineering Bachelor degree. I would never wish this upon anyone else, because of the NON credit transfer to other colleges, and the cost to go was outrageous, but the last part of the year was spent with Allen Bradley PLC?s and learning the IRB 1400 ABB robot. The school owed a brand new IRB 1400. So I switched schools and earned my bachelors at ITT in Automation Manufacturing Engineering. My work place accepted my Bachelor Degree from ITT like I had finished with a Bachelor Degree from Purdue. They didn?t seem to mind. Some will say that a Bachelor from ITT is not as good as a Bachelor from Purdue, but I learned more about the field that I wanted to learn about at ITT than I would have ever done so at Purdue. The courses at ITT did not cover any panel views or SCADA I you are going to have to know this stuff to get the job done at your work, then make the place you work fork over the bill to go to these MINI seminars as I would call it to learn any panel view or SCADA like RS VIEW 32 classes. Our Allen Bradley rep does a great job coming around offering classes at their location. Nominal costs are around $800 per class and generally last 3-4 days. Most of the time, my place of employment has sprung for these seminars, or you just become a ?WING IT? type guy?Like the rest of us. You never know what you are doing, until you try. Now on the FLIP SIDE, I have a good (younger) friend who said that Purdue now offers more classes in PLC and Automation that they ever have before, which when I went, was ZERO CLASSES, so that might mean they offer two or three classes. My friend said he learned how to program PLC?s and learn DDE, and did a small RS VIEW 32 project in his class, which I was impressed with that once he told me. So if you live close to Purdue, check there on the automation classes they offer. That is my advise.

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Thanks for the reply, it was very informative. I will do some research on all of the courses at a couple of colleges that will be pretty close when I relocate in a couple of months. I know what you mean about "Wing It", I have a little plc programming knowledge (micrologix, slc, plc/5, DH+, DDE with RSLinx) that I aquired on my own (also with great forums such as this one). I also learned a little about RSView 32 by sitting and reading through the manual and playing with a demo version that had a limit of 25 tags. Most of what I learned (so far) came from just sitting down and going over programs in motion and good old fashioned playing around. The thirst for knowlegde never seems to be satisfied, I have grown to enjoy programming (considering the limited amount that I have done), but it seems like catch 22 you need the degree or the experience but you can't get the experience without the degree. Thanks again for the info.

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Ya, Just moved up to two stars (5 posts now) . :p

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Don't forget, the old adage still applies. with most companys you need experience to get the job. but how do you get the job in the first place ? Education is important but you must remember it is only a step. Many people go through the entire education system along one path and then end up doing something totally unrelated because they have no experience. Talk to companys local to where you live or study, preferably one where you have a contact to get your foot in the door even if it is only for pin money.

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I graduated from Purdue (the main West Lafayette, Indiana campus) back in 1995 with a BS in Computer Integrated Manufacturing Technology (School of Technology).  While in school, I got to program and configure Allen-Bradley PLC-2's and PLC-5's (fairly new at that time), PanelView OITs, and even Adept AND Mitsubishi Robots.  We had classes teaching us software like Visual Basic, C, and Access.  We learned concepts like OLE and DDE.  In my senior year we even had a project involving writing PLC code for a small conveyor we had in our lab that counted parts that it handed to a robot (also programmed by us) to process, sent that information to a Visual Basic front-end, that in turn sent that information to an Access database.   While I may not be using Visual Basic 3 under Windows 3.1 and running AB6200 series software in a DOS shell anymore, the concepts are still the same - data collection, control programming, data passing, etc.   Not to belittle your experience (because I honestly don't wish to do that to anyone), Purdue had a good Automation department for a while, although few knew about it.  It was hidden away in the School of Technology, where you got your hands on a PLC before graduating!    

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Do you still have any contacts in the Purdue faculty?  I would like to encourage such a program.  Perhaps some new equipment or software. :)

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I'm sure they'd appreciate that!  I'll have to search through my old contacts lists tonight & get back to you on that one.

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I would suggest the following in the school of Electrical Engineering Technology at Purdue University... Professor Tom Roberston - tlrobert@purdue.edu Professor Mike Jacob - jmjacob@tech.purdue.edu Professor Anthony Oxtoby - ajoxtoby@tech.purdue.edu Tell them a recent grad sent you. Many are seasoned veterans from the 'real-world' and have vast experience at other universities with similar schooling. As one of the previous posting had stated, you will not be doing what you went to school for. Check out univeristy programs with cooperative education programs.

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