How did you get your foot in the door?

Just looking for some personal experiences of how you got started in the programming end of the business.

Formal schooling?

OJT?

Self taught?

Just kinda fell into it?

Currently I am an electrician working for a medium sized electrical contractor. I do a lot of control wiring, VFD, PLC (wiring only, programming done by others), etc. type work. I'm one of two guys in the company (70 guys in the field) that does this type of work. We are the "technical guys".

I enjoy the "brain work" areas of the trade and am interested in taking that next step into plc programming. I deal with quite a few programmers and have talked to them about how they got started in this business. For the most part they just kind of fell into it. Most of the guys we deal with had no formal training, they have a combination of OJT and self taught just messing around with the software and figuring things out. I'm curious as to how common this is.

I definitely see this as my future. I'm 33 right now and have no desire to be installing conduit, pulling wires, etc. when I'm 50. Unfourtunately this is an area my current employer has no interest in exploring so I'm on my own as far as progressing my career down this path. I am very interested in any advice some of you established plc guys might have.

Thoughts?

I'm curious why your current employer doesn't what to do the Plc
Programming in house?
Can you explain to him that the company can make $

You can take some classes but you have to do some small simple projects first
To really learn

We are a commercial/industrial electrical contractor. The company feels that this technical aspect of the job is best left to qualified specialists. We do all of the conduit, wire pulling, terminations, etc., then they call in a third party to program.

I am trying to convince them to get me some training so that we can start doing this work "in house", but they are resistant to take the risk of having issues with a less experienced programer (me) causing project delays or customer satisfaction issues. I have tried to tell them the only way I will have experience is by getting experience. Kind of a catch 22.

I am fairly intelligent (at least I like to think so) and between my electronics schooling from the past and my experience as an electrician doing the nuts and bolts of this type of work, I am confident that I could learn the programing end of things with some effort on my part.

If my current employer doesn't come around soon, we will have to part ways so I can pursue this with another company.

If the opportunity isn't there ,it may be time to move on
What about small system integrators in your area?

Another possibility is for me to go into business for myself, I am a licensed electrician in MA, NH, VT, RI, and CT, so that may be a decision for me to make shortly.

My main question, and the reason I started this thread, is to find out what the most common/acceptable way people get started programing.

Should I be looking into an engineering degree? Or should I just do a little on-line training, start doing some small projects and learn by making mistakes and figuring things out.

I did take a 3 day class put on by GE about 8 years ago, learned about some of the PLC and HMI programing basics.

Talking to some of the PLC programers that I have worked with, the general feeling I get from them is that if you know control wiring, reading ladder diagrams, how the different components work (which I do)then most of the programing is learning the different manufacturers software.

Has this been true in your experience?

I started by building control panels and going to school at night. The company I worked for let me "enter" the programming instructions using the hand held programmer this was before pc's
I was lucky because a couple of the engineers pulled me under their wing. This was my start

Going back to school and getting an engineering degree or just learning plc programming are two different things.
Going back to school sounds like a awesome idea. Can you work and go to school, it's tough but it can be done
Sounds like your not being challenged at work
How's your home life ? I'm not prying, if your married and have kids- work it out with your wife
I think life is short- do what makes you happy

When I started out doing PLC programming there was no formal training in our region yet. But then it was 30 years ago. My department chief was simply bright enough to let us electricians try the stuff out. The ones who got the thing going and were willing to spend some time he taught how to do it the right way during the breaks. I spent the best part of a year eating my lunch while taking his 'classes', reading up and so on. I guess that were the good ol' times .

Kind regards,

It would be tough to jump right into this and declare yourself capable of PLC programming. The path I took was pretty much by accident, but seemed to workout fine. Started as a technician even though I had a degree. Started with troubleshooting PLC equipment, which allowed me to look at a professionally done program, and start to understand program flow, I/O, etc. I wasn't allowed to do any programming there, though. Next employer had no one on staff that understood PLC's. I started some small machine control projects from scratch, and started doing bigger machines.

I learned nothing about PLC's in college. Some dedicated PLC training would certainly help, but you probably won't "get it" until you actually start doing real projects. I know several great PLC programmers that don't have a college degree.

Bottom line is I think you need to get in with an integrator that is already doing PLC projects. You should be able to work your way up the ladder there, or get some experience and go out on your own.

Back in the late 60's when PLCs were first becoming available, I drew the short straw and got stuck with them!

I don't program much any more but but did for quite a while.

By schooling I have a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering. Went to work as a machine designer doing CAD, 3D Modeling, Design etc. The company I worked for was very small and was only using Allen Bradley SLC 150's programmed with a hand held programming terminal. The Electrical Engineer would draw out the ladder logic by hand and the main machine Assembler would enter the program on the Hand Held.

As things started to advance and PLC's required a PC to program, I was just in the tight place at the right time. The Electrical Engineer was very old school and had a phobia of computers. I was always interested in computers from the TI-99 4/A I had as a kid, to getting a job at the computer center in college to taking a mainframe assembly language class just for fun.

When we moved to the SLC500 he would still draw out the ladder by hand and I would just enter it into the APS software. As time moved on and changes / additions needed to be done, I did more of that on my own and he did less. Eventually, he just let me do it all and he focused on the schematics only. At first things worked but I did a lot the hard way and learned a lot along the way. I can remember the first complex program I worked on was over 500 rungs but it was all in the same file. No breaking it up into logical units, just full steam ahead... Next came HMI's and all the capabilities that bring to a machine. Our last job before looking at HMI's had 108 physical operators (Pushbuttons, Pilot Lights, etc)!

I think having a solid mechanical background was key for the programming I was doing (custom machining and automation) since everything eventually moved something. Many times the devil was in the details of how the sensor interfaced with the part or how the physics of the system behaved in the real world. Concepts like de-bouncing an input or adding a time delay to an output are not immediately apparent but invaluable in certain situations.

This isn't to say people can't pick up these skills and be great at programming but after you learn the basics of and/or/timer/counter then the real learning begins. Not sure a startup can afford to learn and stay afloat. Or at least, you'd have to be smart enough to know your limits and stay within them.

The biggest thing I see happening in the PLC programming world is the need to be an expert in all kinds of communication and also a trend to need to know about data logging and perhaps data bases. More and more customers want to be able to log data from the machine. Do you know how to change your laptop's IP address? Do you know what the subnet mask does? Can you ping a controller? These are basic ethernet skills needed before you even start to know what Ethernet I/P, Profinet/ Modbus/TCP are. Then if you are communicating to older devices, having a good grasp of RS-232 becomes key. Do you know what a null modem adapter is? What about N81?

I'm not writing this to discourage anyone, just trying to think of things I have come across along the way and where I think the field is going.

When I started over 30 years ago I worked as a maintenance technician in a factory that manufactured hydraulic lifters for automotive engines. I performed electrical troubleshooting on the production machinery and became quite good at it.

At the same time I went to school at night and earned an associates degree in Industrial electronics. As I gained a reputation for my electrical abilities I worked my way into doing retrofits on old relay panels with plcs. I was allowed to design, wire, and program the systems and learned a vast amount during these projects. I took a 5 day Allen Bradley class on the PLC 2 controllers and absolutely loved the technology.

I was eventually moved into engineering and have worked in several industries designing, programming, and commissioning systems all over the world.

Today I have my own business that provides PLC training, PLC Panel design and programming. Also, the industry today requires programming skills for data collection and networking. I now spend a lot of time developing my Visual Basic programming skills as well. I am mostly self taught and continue to read anything I can gets my hands onto about PLCs and automation.

Like many, I just wandered into the field, found out that I liked it and decided to stay put. I second Norm's point about the value of a mechanical background. What we're doing is to apply electrical components to mechanical systems. We generally don't need the more advanced topics covered in an electrical engineering curriculum. We don't need to know how to design a motor, just how to choose the correct size motor for the application. If we were designing a PLC or a VFD or the latest proximity sensor, then probably an electrical engineering degree would be more useful.

In many ways, those of us who got into the game when PLCs were young had it easier than someone trying to break in now. Back then PLCs (as well as computers in general) were more limited in their capabilities so we had less to learn. We've had the luxury of being able to digest new features as they've been introduced.

I just thought I would add a little personal history for you guys so you know where I come from.

After high school I attended and graduated from a 2 year technical college with a certificate in electronics. Also, transferred most of those credits to a local college, took a few more night classes and received my Associates of Science degree.

After graduating from electronics school, the job market for electronics technicians in this area was terrible, so I ended up taking a job with an electrical contractor as a Voice and Data installer. I did the Data guy thing, as well as being an electrical apprentice when the Data work was slow, for four years. During that time I worked on commercial/industrial construction projects as well as working with the service guys (also commercial/industrial).

The company paid for me to take classes at night and I took the journeyman electrician exam. After receiving my j-man's license I became a service electrician, doing mostly industrial with some commercial. I learned a lot about industrial controls and figured out real fast that is where the money is.

I have worked for 3 electrical contractors now in the 14 years have been in the field and am now at the point where my technical knowledge and abilities put me in the top few guys of a company with about 70 guys in the field. I do most of the controls, fire alarm, and really anything else that requires any thought.

Sorry for the long post, just trying to give you a little idea of my experience.

I do appreciate the advice from everyone.

I plan on visiting this forum regularly and hopefully learning a lot from what you guys have to offer.

I don't expect to be an overnight sucess, I am more than willing to invest the time to learn what is necessary to make this next step in my career happen. This is a long term career goal for me, I just don't see the physical work of an electrician being sustainable until retirement. At 33 years old I feel great, at 63 it will probably be a different story.

It certainly seems from the advice I've gotten here, as well as real world discussions with plc techs, I need to look into some local automation companies and start getting my feet wet.

EBFD6 said:

At 33 years old I feel great, at 63 it will probably be a different story.

Click to expand...

63 isn't so bad! It's after that when things go downhill quickly!