where do I go now??

Hey Guys,

I have intrest in learning more about plc's. I am a plant electrician with pretty solid troubleshooting skills but I never really learned how to program. Today I finished a 2 day class for fundementals and programing..and it was a blast!!
Question is what can I do to keep learning and keep moving forward? Is there school you can go to and get certified? Is it woth the money to take an online course of study?
As I said I'm a plant electrician and for years now I've worked with pulled wire for and helped out many who have come to help program new machines as we have got them, I always wanted to be that "GUY" and I feel now is the time for my persuit to do what I would enjoy doing not what I have to
Thanks for your time and I look forward to learning and talking more with you "GUYS" on this site

If you stick to this site, you'll surely learn a new thing each day (I do). This site also sells PLC training DVDS which you can buy and learn on your own time. You will certainly get to what you aim for if you are commited to your work but as they say "Rome wasn't built in a day" so it will take a while. PLC's.net is the best!!!

cheers,

WARNING: Traffic Lights Ahead...

Or use the "Try our online PLC Simulator- FREE. Click here now to try it. " link at the top of the webpageto make a virtual PLC to do whatever you can think of, I hear Traffic Light Simulations are popular training exercises...

Alternatively, you can acquire hardware and self teach at home but that could be expensive, especially if you want to use what your company has and they only use one of the higher end PLCs. Is your employer willing to help you do this "on your own time" by providing a spare PLC to work with? Hopefully you work for a company that wants it's employees to be improving themselves (and making them more valuable to the company).

When I first started with PLCs' we had a test bench set up in the electrical shop. While I was waiting to get called out to fix things I would grab parts off our shelves and connect them up to the PLC and make things blink turn on/off spin etc. Next to this site working with the test bench was the best tool to learn for me.

Stay at it. It is the best job I ever had programming PLCs'

The best thing you can do is use it! The problem with a lot of those classes is that students get back and get bogged down with all the stuff that has piled up while they were gone and they get sidetracked. If you can you need to immediately start using the knowledge that you just got. You also may want to check out our PLCMentor site as it was designed around guys like you that may not have a mentor to work with. We have videos and such, but we also have a weekly question and answer web class that is used for mentoring. Pretty much anything goes as far as questions and you can bring programs to the class to be reviewed or just discuss changes that you want to make. Also, if you are using AB and need the program, there is a freebie RSLogix500 program they offer as well as an emulator to play with. There is also a 90 day trial of the RSLogix5000 available. The main thing is to keep your momentum - use what you learned and dont stop learning.

As you can already fault trace - are you ok with relay logic or just reading drawings.

Is it woth the money to take an online course of study?

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Before plunking down a lot of hard-earned cash, go through all the cheaper methods. Learn all you can on your own, and only after that go to a paid professional course.

I recommend that you buy one of the PLC Simulator programs that run on personal computers. LogixPro comes with very good student exercises. Work though all of those and you will be well on your way.

Simulators are great for learning, but nothing like having real hardware that you can blink lights or spin motors to motivate you. You can find affordable PLC parts on ebay, though they sometimes get amazing prices (>1/2 retail). We use mostly Beckhoff Automation and there are many older K-bus modules for sale since many are upgrading to EtherCAT. The programming is the same, just slower response speeds (~5 ms). Wago I/O is the same (or similar) to K-bus. If you can score a CX1000 CPU w/ runtime, the rest is very inexpensive. Hope your boss will spring for it.

MikeW said:

I hear Traffic Light Simulations are popular training exercises...

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I Lol'ed

thanks

I have been messing around with the logixpro its alot of fun so far. I am going to see what I can do about getting a brick to play around with at work. but for now the simulator is right up my alley.

In my opinion, the only time something is a waste of money is if you decide before hand that it is a waste of money and then purchase it anyways (or you just bought a Kia).

Phils books on this site are definately not a waste of money.View attachment 18743
PLCMentor.com has excellant videos. Definately not a waste of money.
Several plc manufacturer's offer free software. Ebay has lots of stuff. You'll want to trend the buying cycles before you buy.

I couldn't learn on a simulator. Visualizing smoke versus the pulse quickening mini mushroom cloud that leaves you bleary eyed and gasping for breath are two incomparable experiences.

I started learning on a $10 keyence KV-24 from ebay. Bullet proof, smoke proof and pfssst proof as well. The software has a counted usage so I used it in VPC with a mapped network drive to save my work, then set the vm so it didn't save changes when turned off.
Keyence has excellant literature on their site.
Siemens has or did have free online "training".
http://www.industry.usa.siemens.com...-training/blended-learning/Pages/blended.aspx

http://claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/~jackh/eod_redirect/index.html

When you get into it more, there's other stuff like this:
http://www.omega.com/literature/transactions/

I'm not big on simulators either, but different people learn in different ways and it does teach some essential concepts. If you are going to get a 'brick' and you have the money, I would suggest seeing if you can get a cheap Micrologix1100. You could use the freebie software to program it and the 1100 allows online programming which requires a few different skills from offline. If you just want to see some real world stuff the ML1000 will probably be cheaper but no online programming. Also dont forget the benefit of the emulator. I guess it is kinda like a simulator in some ways. The key difference is that if you get a program running in RSlogix with the emulator, you can dump that program to a real processor and it should work also. Real versus memorex (I guess you have to be old enough to understand that one).

I also like Hugh Jack's book that todster mentions above (the claymore link). His book uses real PLC programming examples and doesnt try to go generic one fits all. The generic books are useless. You will never find a generic PLC to program. Might as well base the training around something real and let the student generalize when they face something different.

Also todster thanks for the nice words about our site.

Russell

I recommend not getting married to 1 type of PLC also. AB is a good place to start but I myself found Mitsubishi a little more user friendly and after working with it the AB stuff made a lot more sense. On Mitsubishi's website www.meau.com there is a free simulator for the FX series PLC that is very good.

-Dave

I have been messing around with the LogixPro its a lot of fun so far.

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Bryan, then you are well on your way. Havng fun is the first requirement. Those who think programming is drudgery do not last long in the field. I recommend that you start with the first LogixPro Student Exercises and work through ALL of them. Many don't like simulators because they never actually completed the LogixPro Student Exercises. LogixPro is a cut above most simulators because it not only simulates the Allen Bradley SLC, but it also simulates the machinery or device that you are writing the prrogram to run.