Hi

Are you literally asking how to 'design a PLC', like you are planning to create and produce a controller similar to a Siemens or GE or Allen-Bradley controller ?

Or are you asking about the basics of designing a control system using a PLC ?

It's entirely possible you're trolling the Forum for fun, or that you're very clumsily asking a question for a school assignment.

Either way, you're going to need to provide a lot more information for your question to be answerable. It's posts like this that make me want the Moderators to have a 'freeze thread' button.
 
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Your question is absurdly broad.

Maybe you're actually an experienced embedded electronic control system designer who leads a team of development engineers at a major industrial electronics firm, and I'm just misunderstanding your terse sentence-fragment posts.

But more likely you don't appreciate the degree of complexity, difficulty, and cost involved in the development of industrial electronic control devices. It's substantial.
 
Steve Bailey said:
IMHO, if you have to ask that question, you probably shouldn't be asking it in the first place.
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I agree and even if you know it takes a lot of resources to develop a PLC. I know. There isn't a whole lot of difference between a PLC and a motion controller but then think of all the different I/O cards a PLC has that a motion controller doesn't.

Writing the equivalent of Step7 will take many years.
 
This is what they tell us has made America great.
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India is working on it.

Amudhan,

1. What resources do you have to use to make your circuit-board drawings for your new PLC? Do you have some drafting software to make circuit drawings?

2. Do you have tools and test instruments to test each breadboard circuit?

3. What size of PLC are you planning? Which microprocessor do you plan to use (or are you going to design and build a microcprocessor also)?

4. Are you also designing and programming the firmware or software that operates the PLC?

5. Are you also designing and programming the user software that will be used to write user programs your new PLC?

6. There are many other questions, but I have got very tired just thinking about your project....
 
And that's the sort of thing that is disheartening about projects like this.

I remember a similar 'Open Source PLC' project a few years ago. The lead hardware designer posted to the listserv saying he had to wait until his next disability check came before he could buy another batch of circuit boards, but if somebody wanted to contribute $70 he could do it sooner.

While I admire the attitude and goals, if your development project stalls over a matter of $70, it is profoundly undercapitalized.
 
Ken Roach said:
And that's the sort of thing that is disheartening about projects like this.

I remember a similar 'Open Source PLC' project a few years ago. The lead hardware designer posted to the listserv saying he had to wait until his next disability check came before he could buy another batch of circuit boards, but if somebody wanted to contribute $70 he could do it sooner.

While I admire the attitude and goals, if your development project stalls over a matter of $70, it is profoundly undercapitalized.
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hmmm, just wondering how many $70 "donations" he received...
 
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