Your Background/Experience

Hello All,
I have been a member for a couple of years now. Mainly scrolling through to gain more knowledge or to find help with a problem. Its nice to see many users with great knowledge and even seeing the new guys ask for help. I wanted to ask what everyone's history is as well as their current role.

As for me, I had little electrical knowledge and broke out in the West Texas oil field. Had a great mentor and started building panels, Learning about instrumentation, Plc's, Vfds, and motor Control. I became the "drive" guy for our company. Since we were a support team we helped with any brand or model that showed up, but we were Allen Bradley and Wonder ware Integrators. Well, he was, I was just the help and learning. Started programming small stand alone projects. Got my programmers certificate through Rockwell for studio 5000. I then moved to middle Georgia and worked at Caterpillar for a few months before accepting a Controls Specialist job here at Frito Lay. I love it and have gained a ton of knowledge here. Whats your story?

I'm definitely still in the learning stage of the process. I'm currently a full time student in VA studying computer science but over last summer I got my first programming job transferring an HMI program from RSView32 to FactoryTalk View for some guys in New Hampshire. I've done some small pieces of other projects before that working for my father, but this was the first project that was really mine. Looking to get a job with a company near me in the coming years and it sounds like I've got a good shot from the phone call I had with their boss.

Sorry, I am not going to check the truth of someone's story, but you start with couple of years membership, and almost on the same row on left I read "Join Date: Nov 2018". This is hardly about half of 1 year, not couple of them.
So, nothing secret in my story, but I share it wherever I think I get the proper attitude as return.

University graduate with B.S. in Engineering technology. learned to weld, braze, solder, machine shop, motor generators. Teaching assistant for 3 years. then built test equipment for them for 6 months. accuracy was better than MIL specs.
Industrial maintenance for 18 months and was laid off.
Went to work for an OEM as a panel builder / electrician. then learned panel layout, programming, quotations, purchasing, autocad for electrical drawings, mechanical designer, inventory control, machinist when needed, machine installations, debug. also did conveyor and paint systems, controls engineer for DOD contractor.
Currently at a steel plant doing IS/IT work and electrical engineering.
Basically take customer specs and end up with a fully functional machine.

james

James Mcquade said:

University graduate with B.S. in Engineering technology. learned to weld, braze, solder, machine shop, motor generators. Teaching assistant for 3 years. then built test equipment for them for 6 months. accuracy was better than MIL specs.
Industrial maintenance for 18 months and was laid off.
Went to work for an OEM as a panel builder / electrician. then learned panel layout, programming, quotations, purchasing, autocad for electrical drawings, mechanical designer, inventory control, machinist when needed, machine installations, debug. also did conveyor and paint systems, controls engineer for DOD contractor.
Currently at a steel plant doing IS/IT work and electrical engineering.
Basically take customer specs and end up with a fully functional machine.

james

Click to expand...

mdim said:

Sorry, I am not going to check the truth of someone's story, but you start with couple of years membership, and almost on the same row on left I read "Join Date: Nov 2018". This is hardly about half of 1 year, not couple of them.
So, nothing secret in my story, but I share it wherever I think I get the proper attitude as return.

Click to expand...

It might be his Alt account man, who knows?

Industrial Electricity Vocational class in high school. Went to work as a construction electrician for 30+ years. Learned controls basics in school and every chance I got while in the contracting field. The company sent me to school to learn PLCs around 2005. I did a lot of work at factories all around this area. I was offered a job as a PLC tech at a door factory in 2015. I accepted, stayed there a year and a half then my current job came open. I'm now the supervisor over electrical maintenance at a plastic film factory.

Here's an old thread on the same topic. I'm pretty sure there are others. I'll post them as I find them.

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=76053

mdim said:

Sorry, I am not going to check the truth of someone's story, but you start with couple of years membership, and almost on the same row on left I read "Join Date: Nov 2018". This is hardly about half of 1 year, not couple of them.
So, nothing secret in my story, but I share it wherever I think I get the proper attitude as return.

Click to expand...

well for me, I lurked around this site for a year or more, first stumbling upon it through google, then more or less visiting regularly before I signed up. Well I don't count it as membership.
Actually the general crowd on this forum amazes me. I love the share of knowledge around here.

For other things I generally don't like to share too much personal information.

grtz, wimpie.

I am an electrical/instrumentation dual trade ticket. Then a great mentor and this website and a will to learn. Ron Beaufort. The learning pit.

Started my apprenticeship as an Electrical Fitter in 1959. Trained first winding motors then building switch boards. Still a first year apprentice and sent out on service work - breakdowns - did not have a clue at what I was looking at - the way it was in those days. From that they found I had a bent for controls - second year apprentice designing control circuits. Third year apprentice designing HV transformers with the engineer and on it went - welders, drink mixers - anything. Spent 25 years in sales and management then went back to my trade. I was selling PLCs and had to learn (late 1980s) - self taught. Have been designing, building and programming control systems since 1992 and continuing on. Automated diesel generator power stations over the years - 415V, 11KV, 22KV - all sorts. Emergency power, swimming pools, SCADA (self taught as well) - anything to do with controls. Worked with some strange generator systems as well - start the generator - 24VDC burst into the windings to get the alternator going - start a generator - close with another and then excite - no synchronising gear. Still looking for challenges at 75.

I started factory life stacking tires for a living. I was a green tire sorter. I walked about 12 miles a shift and handled about 4000 tires. I was on the job about 3 days when I decided I wanted to be a maintenance tech. They made the most hourly and seemed to have time to stand around a polish their tools, take long breaks, etc. I also had a knack for fixing things, so that is the route I took. After I was accepted into the maintenance tech program, they sent me to school for a year to learn all things a multi-craft maintenance tech needs to know. It was an excellent bunch of classes and I am forever grateful for the opportunity that employer gave me.

When we got to our two weeks of PLC classes, I was stunned to find out our multi-million dollar machines were being run by PLCs with 16K of ram and this logic that was like graphical assembly. Having been a PC hobbyist as a 14 year old (with the Atari 400) I already fully understood number systems and much of what goes on under the hood of a PLC so I zoomed through those intro classes and quickly became known at work as a PLC guy...one thing led to another and now 3 employers later, I am still loving it.

mdim said:

Sorry, I am not going to check the truth of someone's story, but you start with couple of years membership, and almost on the same row on left I read "Join Date: Nov 2018". This is hardly about half of 1 year, not couple of them.
So, nothing secret in my story, but I share it wherever I think I get the proper attitude as return.

Click to expand...

Welp you caught me! haha No i had to make a new account. I forgot my password when i started a new job. My email i used was from my old job and i no longer have access to it.

US Army right out of High School, basic electronics and communications. (Signal Corps)

Thought I wanted to be a auto mechanic so tried that a couple years but realized after working on them all day I didn't want to mess with my own, which I really loved to do.

Started in Electrical Maintenance at my first factory job and was doing PLC related stuff pretty quick. As that old gray iron foundry was closing I went to work in CNC maintenance and did several years as Maintenance Supervisor.

The last 15 years doing controls, panel building, machine integration, and whatever is needed. I've got about 12 more years then gonna hopefully be put out to pasture.

I started out in the medical field. It’s called Biomed. However, that field is stagnant. They keep getting outsourced, downsized, and cut back. I got tired of starting over at low pay and no vacation. So I taught myself PLC programming. It’s been fun.

I started out wiring houses, moved into commercial, then industrial, and finally after 25 years of construction, I decided to give my knees, back, shoulders, and elbows a rest and smooth talked my way into a maintenance job. Thankfully I had a chance to go to a couple of PLC classes to learn some basics. I stumbled across this site one night while getting my backside handed to me by a misbehaving PID, and I've been lurking here ever since. I couldn't begin to guess the dollar value of what I have learned here, or how much money it has saved my employers in downtime. I'm pretty sure the saved downtime number is well in to seven figures.

My work life now consists staying awake all night and getting paid well based on what I know, and not how many feet of rigid I run a day. I can say for certain this is much better.

Bubba.