What PLC for high school students? help!

Hey guy's

I have a customer looking to train their students (high school) they want to introduce them to automation controls such as PLC's and HMI's

They were considering going with Automation Direct, I am trying to lead them into Allen Bradley or Mitsubishi due to the program limit size with the demo software, what do you think of the 100 words limit? is it large enough?

Do you know if Automation Direct has a cheaper software that they can get 395.00 for each PC is not very cheap, this is a high school so I think the budget is not unlimited

I am emailing them (the high school) and going to ask them to look at this thread for advice and join in the conversation if I have said anything wrong.

I also don't want to sound like a salesman and lead to the wrong thing for what they are doing...

I also know that Automation Direct looks at this site... so if you would like to donate please contact me and I will give you their contacts so you can discuss more options.

OR if anyone has another idea please post.

PS. I wish my high school had PLC's...

Thanks
Mark

Mark,

being a trainer (and not a teacher - there's a slight, but meaningfull difference), I know that you have to consider the budget, but also the interest of the students. Using a PLC they will come in touch with after they're graduated is something to take in consideration also.

I know both Siemens and Allen-Bradley have very interesting concepts when it comes to co-operating with schools and training institutes. I (my company that is) have had vast reductions in the past when I was looking for new(er) equipment.

The best thing to do (in my opinion) is to look what brands are mainly used in the wide neighbourhood of the school in question and to try to make an interesting deal with one (or more) of those brands.


Kind regards,

Hello,

Doesn't AD allow for a company (maybe school) to make more downloads than just one with there software? That was my belief when I purchased the PLC and the C-More software. As I have it on 1 PC and 2 Laptops. Another thing is there books are very nice. I still like AB though, but many others like AD.

Leon

Jean-Pierre's advice is excellent. Have the school contact the vendors to see what kind of educational discounts they offer. I agree that the 100 word limit on the DirectSoft would severely limit what the students could do in their labs.

The other thing to consider is training the teacher. The students won't get much out of the class if the teacher isn't reasonably proficient. Which vendor will be willing to support the teacher's efforts to get up to speed?

I would look at using something that is truly IEC compliant (at least more than AB) and had the full range of IEC components available (LD, FB, SFC, ST and IL) then the knowledge gained is applicable to a wider variety of vendors.
Have a look at UnityPro and an M340. The S version of Unity is relatively cheap and includes a full simulator

Please have the school contact us regarding the software and be sure to have them state that they are an educational institution.

I would recommend using Codesys. It is standard IEC 61131. I feel it is better to teach students based on standards. The software is a free download. It can run with a similulor.
It is the kernal that runs with Beckhoff, Bosch Rexroth, wago, and many others.

Look at www.3s-software.com

I can say from experience that Allen-Bradley does offer considerable discounts to educational institutions. When I built a number of trainers for my local vocational school, we had to fill out some paperwork and jump through a few hoops to confirm our status as an eligible institution, but the discounts were very, very deep. They must have been selling the hardware at cost, and basically giving the sofware away.

As Jean-Pierre says, it's important to consider what your students will be exposed to in industry. Before I built my trainers I polled my students (mostly maintenance electricans) and almost all of them reported that their companies were using mainly Allen-Bradley PLCs. I'm sure the situation may be different in other areas but it was a no-brainer for me because my job is to make them more skilled in their current situation, not to try to convince them of what I think is the best or most cost-effective brand.

I find that it's difficult to teach PLCs without sounding like a salesman sometimes. Although there are some concepts that overlap between brands (number systems, basic ladder logic, etc), most of the "meatier" topics are specific to a certain brand. So you just have to pick one and run with it.

this is another line of discussion - besides the (GOOD) advice that's already been offered on which brand to pick ...

remember that these are high-school students ... few (if any) are going to be overly impressed with projects that just turn indicator lamps on and off ... I've used the following idea before - with EXCELLENT success ...

wire the PLC's outputs to some solid-duty contactors to provide an "interposing relay" function ... wire the outputs of the contactors to regular 120 VAC receptacles ... naturally you'll want to keep the "hot" wiring (and any exposed relay contacts, etc.) safely enclosed and away from inquisitive fingers - but the receptacles are no more dangerous that a common wall outlet ...

now the students can plug in different applicances (can opener, table lamp, etc.) and control those with the PLC ... the "plug and play" variety makes for a much more interesting dog-and-pony show than just flashing LEDs ... naturally you'll want to monitor the students to keep dangerous power tools from being controlled - but I think that you've got the general idea ...

Ron Beaufort said:

this is another line of discussion - besides the (GOOD) advice that's already been offered on which brand to pick ...

remember that these are high-school students ... few (if any) are going to be overly impressed with projects that just turn indicator lamps on and off ... I've used the following idea before - with EXCELLENT success ...

wire the PLC's outputs to some solid-duty contactors to provide an "interposing relay" function ... wire the outputs of the contactors to regular 120 VAC receptacles ... naturally you'll want to keep the "hot" wiring (and any exposed relay contacts, etc.) safely enclosed and away from inquisitive fingers - but the receptacles are no more dangerous that a common wall outlet ...

now the students can plug in different applicances (can opener, table lamp, etc.) and control those with the PLC ... the "plug and play" variety makes for a much more interesting dog-and-pony show than just flashing LEDs ... naturally you'll want to monitor the students to keep dangerous power tools from being controlled - but I think that you've got the general idea ...

Click to expand...

That's a pretty cool idea...Along those lines, instead of outlets, what about some kind of pipe organ/various tones setup. Then, the program would constitute sequencing and duration of the tones to create music. Any thoughts on what could be used as inexpensive tone generators?

Flickering lights can be fun. When I was in vo-tech college, I had access to a PLC trainer (was actually going to school for IT related stuff.) They had an AB SLC something with a 16 point DC out module in it (nothing attached to it.) It took about three lines of code to make the output module count up in binary. It looked like an absolute encoder input. I thought about making it scroll "Hello World" across the led matrix, but I never got time to do it. That and a 4x4 font isn't pretty. The electrical teacher was impressed with just the counter though.

Brian

along the "tone" idea, how about solenoids driving hammers to strike wind chimes? ...



the important thing is to consider the objectives of the HIGH SCHOOL level class ... it's possible of course that some of these students COULD go straight from high school into industry ... but ... remember that these are mostly KIDS ... if it ain't "fun" then they might not get too enthusiastic about digging into this subject matter ...



key point: have "deeper level" projects ready for the inevitable students who want to go further ...

Ron Beaufort said:

along the "tone" idea, how about solenoids driving hammers to strike wind chimes? ...

Click to expand...

Would be difficult to establish duration...I was thinking of full fledge music generator with different tones and duration. For the advanced, develop a 'recipe' setup for downloading different tunes. I could see it being a class collaborative project. The logically inclined developing the code, the more artistic developing the recipes.

I did a similar project when I was first learning about PLC's. We had a PLC simulator that had a receptacle wired to a relay like Ron suggested.

I used an old fashioned toaster (the kind with the flip down doors that is on as long as it is plugged in). I wired in a pot to an analog input and labeled it from light to dark (the toast).

There was a dataliner (I think its been a long time) hooked up to the PLC. When you first turned it on it said "Good morning load bread". When you pushed the on button it turned on the receptacle for a period of time based on the pot setting, then shut off and said "flip toast". Push the button again and it cooked the other side. When done the dataliner displayed "enjoy your breakfast".

It was a good excercise for me, might be something a highschool kid would be interested in.

Being that it is a highschool I would use whatever hardware you can find that the teacher can learn. It will be a very small fraction of the people in the class that actually get into the PLC field but it would be good for giving the kids an idea of how factory automation works.

I have to propose a different solution or two.
Avoid buying any PLC's at at all. Trying to keep the students safe will eat up a lot of resources. Keeping all the equipment safe and working would eat up a lot of time. Eventually, they will let the magic smoke out of some of the gear.
If the goal is to give them a general introduction to controls why not use Automation Studio www.automationstudio.com
(For the record, I have no afiliation with them.)
This would give them safe exposure to all facets of control - electrical, programming and mechanical. I have seen the product used and its pretty neat.

A second alternative would be Lego MindStorms, this would allow them to build and program an application without any risks. Plus is there any kid out there who doesn't like to play with LEGO?

Mike