Asking For Question

Im a student of a one good universities here in the philippines and im taking up industrial automation control and 1 of our majors is taking up PLC programming specially S7 200 software and im very interesting answering some industrial problems..im using now CPU 212 and CPU 222 in our laboratory and sad to say i dont have industrial problems now because i answer it everytime we have laboratory in school...can i ask for industrial problems so that i can expand my knowledge in PLC.....i hope you give me one or two or more much better...thanks and God bless..

What are the algorithims used in PID Tuning software? Can these be put into an excel spreadsheet instead of buying software? Thank you.

Iacet,

You might consider buying (online download) one of the PLC Simulator programs with Student Exercises, such as LogixPro from The Learning Pit. This is an Allen-Bradley RSLogix PLC brand simulator. See this link:

http://www.thelearningpit.com/lp/doc/index.html

Lancie, IACET is looking for a challenge

What is the most difficult PLC trick/question you can think of? I can't think of a lot of things but they get more into PLC or PLC applications.

IACET.
Do you know how to make a low pass filter?
Do you know how to find the least significant bit set efficiently?
Can you count the number of bits set in a register or multiple registers efficiently?
Do you know about indirect or indexed addressing?
Do you know hot to make a state machine? Moore and Mealy diagrams. Could you make a combination lock?
Do you know how to use a Karnaugh map?
Do you know DeMorgan's theorems? ( I find this much handier than Karnaugh maps ).
Do you know the proper way to use a encoder counter? Do you know how to make a 32 bit counter from a 16 bit counter?
Do you know the limits of floating point numbers? For instance a floating point number can count by 1 to what number?
Do you know the purpose and proper use of the sign, carry and overflow bits?

Another problem

How about this? How do you make a one shot (rising edge trigger) on a plc that does not support that instruction specifically? Hint: it only takes two rungs.

IACET can answer all the questions

mcafone said:

How about this? How do you make a one shot (rising edge trigger) on a plc that does not support that instruction specifically? Hint: it only takes two rungs.

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That is trivial for one that can

i answer it everytime we have laboratory in school...

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Students that want to even harder questions are rare. I say good on him. I like his 'F U, challenge the world' attitude. If he can do all the things that I mentioned above then great. So lets try to stump the student. What do you guys think are the toughest PLC questions? IACET is challenging the world is waiting for a challenge.

I can think of difficult applications but not PLC problems.

Scan based lesson

The idea of creating a one shot from rungs instead of a canned instruction is that it teaches you how to use the PLC scan to your advantage. This knowledge also helps in the debuging process. Didn't you ever inadvertantly create a one shot and then spend a bit of time back-tracking for it?

mcafone said:

The idea of creating a one shot from rungs instead of a canned instruction is that it teaches you how to use the PLC scan to your advantage. This knowledge also helps in the debuging process.

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PLC101

Didn't you ever inadvertantly create a one shot and then spend a bit of time back-tracking for it?

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No.

I have had to debug others people code when they used the same one shot many times. It was a mess because the original programmer didn't know how to make a proper state machine.

IACET said:

Im a student of a one good universities here in the philippines and im taking up industrial automation control and 1 of our majors is taking up PLC programming specially S7 200 software and im very interesting answering some industrial problems..im using now CPU 212 and CPU 222 in our laboratory and sad to say i dont have industrial problems now because i answer it everytime we have laboratory in school...can i ask for industrial problems so that i can expand my knowledge in PLC.....i hope you give me one or two or more much better...thanks and God bless..

Click to expand...

Laborary in school is different in the realword application of PLC`s. School gives you the idea and basic things in programing but in industrial real word it all depends on what type of application and program you are doing.

Just a piece of advice don`t be so drastic about saying that you know every thing and you solve all the problem in your laboratory exercise thats good for you!, maybe the laboratory exercise is to simple and basic that any one knows how to solve it.

Me until now im still studying the PLC`s, education in PLC`s should be a continue cycle if you want to specilize in this type of field. Try to go on the job training in different industrial company that uses PLC`s for their application, then thats the thing that you call it a challenge!!!

Regards:

Sherwin

I do agree with all that has been said here. mainly about the continuing education. As SCADA systems, DCS systems and more evolve so does the instructions and functionality of the PLC and of course the PC. So why college education is a good starting point, plan on continuing learning and a very good way is to get in with a company where they have plenty of seasoned staff and see about doing mentoring. There is a lot that can be learned, if you are willing, from the older generation. Some simple rules:

Never be afraid to fail.
Never be afraid to admit problems.
Never be afraid to ask questions.
Never be afraid to learn.