PLC Beginners book

Guys, Ron especially
We teach a maintenance program at a small trade school. We teach a 45 hour PLC class using Amatrol trainers and courseware and students do not get to keep the Amatrol workbooks. This class only goes up thru timers and counters.
We are looking for a text/reference that the students can take with them. All that we have looked at (many very good) cover much more material than we need and cost 100 bucks.
I'm looking for suggestions for book 30 to 50 bucks that adult students can use for a reference on the maintenance type job.
Thanks

why don't you give me a call? ... I've got time to talk - but no time to type ...

Free E-book covers a lot..

http://claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/~jackh/books/plcs/

Thanks Bara

That e book is typical of what we find. It's a great reference for an in depth study of PLCs but we need something that relates to a maintenance guy that only needs to see if something is working or not. Also maybe change a timer or counter or other basic stuff.

I have had a similar problem looking for textbooks for my PLC class (local vocational school). Many of the books I reviewed seemed to be geared towards 4-year college classes or people wanting an in-depth study of programming. And a lot of them didn't cover basic concepts that I felt were important (i.e. the difference between bits, bytes, and words).

I did look at one book, however, that may fit the bill for you. It has a lot of illustrations/diagrams and focuses mostly on PLC troubleshooting. The only caveat is that it is 100% Allen-Bradley. The name escapes me at the moment but when I get home tonight I'll find it and post it.

just as a follow-up - since I have a little bit more “typing” time available today ...



gas called me yesterday and we had a nice little talk ... the basic outcome: no, I don’t have a “textbook” that I use for my “PLC Boot Camp” classes ... instead I’ve made up what I consider to be a “lab book” that the students are allowed to keep ... depending on the course, there are usually about 130 pages in a loose leaf binder ...



in developing this material, I always start by asking myself:



(1) what are the students going to see on their computer screens? ...



(2) what information are they going to need in order to do their “hands-on” exercises? (particularly the wiring assignments) ...



(3) what material would make good notes to help them remember the trickiest things that we covered? ...



(4) and so on along those lines ...



then I work with pictures (NOT with text) first ... usually I grab screen shots from the software, do AutoCAD drawings where appropriate, use Windows Paint to develop Bitmaps, print out a sample ladder program, etc. ... once the pictures are done, I usually work out any necessary text - which in MOST cases turns out to be little more than captions for the pictures ... (if a picture is worth a thousand words, why add the thousand words anyway?) ...



one thing that I include with the book is an “index” of recommended manuals from the Allen-Bradley website ... you can find an example in the Suggested Manuals area of my website ...



notice that I’ve given a brief description of what each manual covers along with its publication number ... I certainly could have made links to take the student directly to each manual on the AB website - but Allen-Bradley requests that such “deep links” not be used ... basically they bypass any of the company’s warnings, disclaimers, etc. - and of course any advertising too ... so I don’t provide the direct links - but the manuals that I’ve listed are all freely and publicly available for downloading ... the students should have no trouble pulling them up for reference - or even printing out whatever sections they might need ...



during the class the books usually stay closed - and instead the course material is covered by assignments on the students’ “hands-on” workstations ... the main objective is to get the material firmly hammered into each student’s noggin - not to simply “go over” the stuff in the book ... once in awhile a few juicy notes are in order ... I’ll say something like “Open your books to page 27.” ... there the students will find a screen shot of the computer display that we’re currently working with ... I always leave wide margins on each page to accommodate any handwritten notes ... a scribble here ... a highlight there ... then we close the book and get right back to work ...


one thing that’s very important is teaching the students how to access and use the software’s Online Help feature ... in many cases this resource is all the reference material that they’ll need - and it comes in much handier while working on the job than trying to find the same material in a paper book ...




over the years I’ve found that the approach I've outlined here works very well for the material that I cover - and meshes well with the rather “intense” methods that I use to teach it ... if anyone is interested in going deeper, please just give me a call ... friendly advice is always free ...

Ron Beaufort said:

one thing that’s very important is teaching the students how to access and use the software’s Online Help feature ... in many cases this resource is all the reference material that they’ll need - and it comes in much handier while working on the job than trying to find the same material in a paper book ...

Click to expand...

Interesting concept. Who has on-line help worth the click to bring it up? The instrumentation world has not yet made the discovery that the price of memory is asymptotically approahing zero, and has yet to implement decent on-line help.

I've talked with people who hire I&M techs who look specifically looking for those who can demonstrate a knowledge of working with documentation (whether paper or electronic), on their own, to find needed information. These are guys tired of re-stating RT_M ! !

Dan

Greetings danw ...

Who has on-line help worth the click to bring it up?

Click to expand...

I’m not exactly sure whether you’re agreeing - or disagreeing - with me ... or maybe you’re just not understanding what I meant to say ... in that case, I apologize for not being more clear ...



basically, by “online help” I’m referring to the built-in help features available in the RSLogix5 and RSLogix500 software packages ... for example: a student runs into an IOT instruction in his program for the first time ... “What the heck is an IOT?” he wonders ... it’s a simple thing to put the cursor on the instruction and press the F1 key ... now I’ll admit that the online help feature is not always as detailed as the information available in the full Instruction Set Reference Manual - but in MANY cases it’s complete enough so that the technician doesn’t have to stop whatever he’s doing and go scrounge up a paper book ...



for another example: in my PLC-5 classes I always cover how to easily determine whether the local chassis is set up for two-slot, one-slot, or half-slot mode ... (we cover them all) ... basically the “Switches” tab on the processor’s status screen will tell the tale ... and while that window is still open, I make sure that each student accesses the little “Help” button in the lower right corner ... and then “drills down” through more of the various “context sensitive” help material that’s available there ... the little “what’s allowed” cheat sheet for the different addressing modes is always a favorite ...



true story: once while I was still working for an Allen-Bradley distributor I got a phone call from a customer I had known for years ... basically he said, “I don’t care WHAT the cost is, I want the BIG book on RSLogix5 software.” He already had the little “Getting Results Guide” that ships with the software - but that’s only about 1/4 inch thick. He wanted to know about ALL of the bells and whistles ... remember, I was working for an AB distributor ... I called - and I called - and I called ... I researched - and I researched - and I researched ... there was NO “big book” to be had ... point: like it or not, everything beyond the “Getting Results Guide” is “online help” ...



in my personal opinion, taken all-in-all, the online help feature isn’t “shabby” at all for RSLogix5 and RSLogix500 ... in fact, when a technician clicks the “Help” button on most popup screens, the information will actually describe (usually in pretty good detail) what the different entries on that particular window are ACTUALLY USED FOR - and what effect changing the settings will have on the PLC’s operation ...



now notice that I didn’t mention the “Online Help” feature for RSLogix5000 earlier ... that’s because the online help feature in that software is pretty much a train wreck ... one of my personal favorites (sarcasm intended) is where “Help” actually tells me to: “Click on OK to accept your changes and close the dialog.” ... seriously now ... if I need THAT MUCH help I probably shouldn’t be messing around in the PLC in the first place ...



but all is not lost ... if the RSLogix5000 software is installed using the default settings, you’ll usually have a VERY complete set of “Online Books” available right there on the computer ... so I make sure that the students know how to access those - and we pretty much practice staying away from the regular “online help” feature ...



anyway ... like I said earlier, I’m not sure whether danw agrees - or disagrees - with me ... but at the points that I’ve made above are my personal opinions ... everyone’s entitled to their own ... once again, I apologize if I didn’t make myself clear enough in my earlier post ...

I've got to agree with Ron on this one. While I find the on-line help in most PC programs absolutely useless - my idea of sensible/appropriate key-words to search with never seems to match that of whoever wrote the help-file.

In Step7, though, it's the same as in RS-Logix, highlight the object/command or whatever and hit F1 and you get a help file which usually tells you all you want or need to know (and quite often a whole lot more as well!).

http://openbookproject.net//electricCircuits/Digital/index.html

This is a link to a useful site that contains some basic ladder logic and onfo on boolean etc all at a basic level

Ron,

I wasn't agreeing or disagreeing, merely asking which on-line help was of use. My opinion of PC on-line help mirrors RMA's view: useless.

You did an excellent job of explaining which software has useful help, which do not.

It's a great idea to get your students into the mode of learning to help themselves.

Dan

It's a great idea to get your students into the mode of learning to help themselves.

Click to expand...

the defense rests, your honor ...

Ron Beaufort said:

the defense rests, your honor ...

Click to expand...

With Laptops having hard drive memory in the gigbits there is no reason not to have the "paper" manuals on your laptop. I work pretty regulary on 6 different PLC's and as I learned these systems I saved all downloaded manuals to go back to my laptop I use on the machines. This saves alot of walking.