PLC jobs

Hey everyone
I was just curious what kind of jobs there are in PLC's outside of the automotive industry. I can think of a ton of fields that more than likely are controlled by PLC's but I'm curious to hear what you guys do for a living.
I personally work for a company that makes window regulators/motors for power windows and also injection molds dashboards/glove boxes/etc for all different kind of auto companies.
I am enjoying my time here learning how to read and write programs and doing maintenance, however I'm not crazy about working in a production enviroment. It's a little messed up because when they have machines/etc break down, they need it to be back up and running immediately. Whether that be during your regular shift or 3:00 a.m. it doesnt matter to them because they're losing thousands of dollars a minute or whatever.
So anyway, to sum up, I'd like to hear what kind of field you guys work in so maybe I can keep some options and ideas open.
Thanks a lot!
...The ALL is Mind; and the Universe is Mental, held within the Mind of The ALL...

No one feel like chatting? lol

oil & gas

Great pay, expect to never be home.

ELake20 said:

oil & gas

Great pay, expect to never be home.

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lol right on
And what do you do for the oil and gas company?

I work for a company that makes robotics for fabs or production lines.

We are starting to break out into more and more areas, we kind of have the same situation happening that something goes down the engineer/tech in the field will contact field service. Then field service talks to us if they don't get it figured out or they tell us about ideas that would make it better in the future, or ways that we can maybe avoid problems.

Really, PLC can be used everywhere (only reason they aren't is cost effective or don't want change). I'm pretty sure they are real helpful in the renewable energies field, especially when we start working with the new hydrogen vapor as a storage median to pump the energy back into the grid when its needed.

AsAboveSoBelow said:

lol right on
And what do you do for the oil and gas company?

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I'm just a vendor and I program PLCs.

Water industry.

Food, Dairy , and Beverage

Flooring industry. Carpet, rugs, hardwood, tile, laminate, and vinyl.

Spent 12 years doing controls design for a company that made assembly fixtures and test equipment for car seat mfg's...now that I have moved on (after the industry tanked 5 years ago) I realize what a miserable industry it is/was to work for, though I did learn alot.

With a systems integrator (barcode scanning/labeling) that works primarily in food industry...stress levels do not compare.

I work in theater doing special effects and automation for scenery.

Stress levels are all over the place - usually fine, but when something isn't working and it effects a show... there's lots of agitated arm waving to say the least.


-rpoet

I currently work at a sawmill, but have worked in automotive, baked goods, plastics. I also know that airports use PLCs for their baggage handling systems.

Natural Gas utility, transmission and storage. 34 years, now retired.

Process control from large natural gas compressors to dehydration plant equipment.
And all related oil field process control instrumentation .

Same as brian:
Flooring industry. Carpet, rugs, hardwood, tile, laminate, and vinyl plus the Green Egg.

however I'm not crazy about working in a production enviroment

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If you want to work with PLCs, you'd better get used to working in a production environment. The vast majority of PLCs are applied to automating production lines.

I'm an independant automation specialist. So far this year I've worked on several component machines in a battery production facility, at a municipal waste incinerator, built a control system for a grinding machine, added a new feature to machine that applies a tamper-resistant element to caps for plastic bottles, written PLC code for an electric heating system, made some modifications to the controls for a vacuum furnace, and translated a program from a 25-year-old PLC to a more modern one. All of those projects also incorporated HMI panels. Most of them used VFDs. One of them had a stepper motor controller.