Greenhorn here with questions

Hello Everyone,

I am thinking of changing careers. I have been in the swimming pool business, and it is not going well right now, considering the economy. I have installed many controllers on pools in the last 2 years, and it seems that there is a wide use of controllers in industry in general.

Recently, I saw an ad for a job. The job is a 70% fit for me, except they also want PLC troubleshooting experience.

I heard that the position was put on hold (economic downturn). That works out for me, because it give me time to learn PLC and troubleshooting.

O.K. now the questions: Where did most of you learn controllers? Is there an exceptional on line course? Is it best learned with a tutorial CD? There are no courses here where I live, so I imagine the books and CDs will have to do. What about hands on? How do I actually pull these apart and learn how to trouble shoot them from a book or CD? How many hours of tutorial is recommended so that I can look an potential employer in the eye and say, "Yes, I have a good working knowlege of controllers, what manufacturer do you use?" Would it make sense to go to a manufacturer and ask for training and a job?

Sorry about being long winded. I do hope that I can stay around here for a while, and learn more. Thanks to all of you.

Hi
There are many different controllers, which all have their quirks. For a newbie in the USA i would rcommend you check out thelearningpit.com (maybe i spelt it wrong) where you can buy a Allen Bradley simulator and mocked up scenarios. AB is big in the USA and a lot of the concepts will carry over into other makes of PLC

Cheers

except they also want PLC troubleshooting experience

Assuming they want a trobleshooter and not a programmer, I would think all you would need is just basic PLC skills of inputs and outputs and maybe some analog so you could tell the programmer that he has a problem and not in associat controls.

hey man

i am a new programmer myself. But i have been in maintenance for years. and that sounds like the job that you are describing, to be a troubleshooter you do not necessarily have to be a programmer.

when a machine has a problem it is rarely the program. if you can identify I/O and know basic electricity then you can learn to troubleshoot.

but to start learn to read ladder logic.

harpoon01 said:

What about hands on? How do I actually pull these apart and learn how to trouble shoot them from a book or CD?

Click to expand...

Hello harpoon01,
When people talk about troubleshooting PLCs, they are not talking about a problem within the controller itself. These very seldom go wrong.
It is normally associated with finding out where a problem may lay within a given automation system.
E.g. Why is the wrapper being cut 1" too short?
Why are the bottles only being filled half way?
Why did that robot arm just crack me 'round the head? etc etc.

The problem may be related to hardware, software, electrical, pneumatic, etc etc. You need to find what is causing the problem within the system.

Hope this helps.

Harpoon01,

Call the company in the ad and ask them "what brands and models of PLC do you use in your plant?"

Then look at buying one for to set up at home and learn how it works. You can find many used PLCs at various auction sites, including E-Bay.

PLC Programming versus Troubleshooting

Harpoon01

I fully agree with Lancie1 about finding out what type of plc's are being used. Unfortunately this does not allways work as the company I work for has the widest range of plc's. From AB, Siemans S5/7, Omron, Mitsubishi, Modicon, B&R(nightmare), Tele to name a few. Just had a Lenze drive plc thrown at me in a new installation.

As noted in this thread most problems faced is an item in the field fails. This is where troubleshooting comes in. An output does not come on. Why? The only way to find is to go online and follow back till the culprit is found. The normal electrician does not have the knowledge/facilities to do this.

My majority of my work function is faultfinding with some programming functions.

My advice to Harpoon1 is to get the fundamentals of ladder logic under the belt first then to advance to FB STL after that

Thanks

Brian