Lets do a bit of 'chest beating' for a change.

[Pete.S.]

My first big PLC job was to rewrite a program from scratch that didn't perform well. It was a program designed to position about 20 motors on a production line running 24/7/365.

I made a new program making it more efficient than the old version. Then I optimized it even further by checking the execution time of every instruction in microseconds and choosing the absolute fastest way of doing things. In the end the scan time was only 1/5 of the original program and the performance was much improved.

Obviously the customer was very pleased. So pleased that I've kept doing jobs for them and still am today.

That was 27 years ago and the program I wrote is still running.

 

[jdbrandt]

not a PLC thing, but pretty cool

I did a printing press DC drive retrofit to an old GOSS Metro press.
It was nine (9) big DC motors, all working on a common shaft; connected by 'clutches'.
I was able to balance the torque on the common shaft by trimming the field current on each motor, until they all drew the same current.
*****
After that, one of the operators in the reel room asked me what I did to the press. (Oh, no....what now).
I said, rather defensively - "nothing, just changed the electrics".
.
Then he said that, for the first time in years, he didn't need his earmuf hearing protection...that the press was running as smooth as he ever heard it.
It was the first and last time anything I did, directly, actually impacted someone's daily work life in a positive way.
[Later, I analysed the utility bills,, and it turns out that the new drives actually saved them nearly 2% in electricity cost(!)

 

[RussB]

Automation related boast...

Back in 1991 or there about I was asked to look at a line of aluminum molding machines that made pistons, this was not injection molding but poured molten aluminum into open dies. There were about 14 of these all controlled by mechanical Eagle timers. After watching and evaluating what was happening I gave my personal guarantee that by updating only the controls with this brand new GE Fanuc 90-30 PLC I could make them at least 20% more efficient. My observation showed that over the years the times had been extended to the point that the machines were at rest more than they were in operation but I missed to what extent they were choked down until we got the first couple updated. By the way this company did not like computers so these were programmed with the Hand Held Programmer.

We added a few limit switches also and by programming these to be 'event drive' rather than 'time driven' production on these machines more than doubled, quality was increased and energy consumption was reduced all because the aluminum did not cool as much between pours.

The only down side is that they updated less than half of the machines and removed the rest so we made less money on the project than anticipated and the operators were not very happy because they no longer had as much control over the speed of each machine.
The owners liked it though.

This stands out for me because it was one of my first wins.

 

[JeffKiper]

I programmed a light bulb to turn on when they turned a switch.

 

[Pete.S.]

I programmed a light bulb to turn on when they turned a switch.

That could be infinitely difficult.

For instance if the switch is in Japan and the light bulb is in Indiana. The switch is connected to a Mitsubishi PLC without ethernet and the light bulb is hooked up to a Honeywell C300. The information has to pass from the plant network in Japan over their firewall to their office network and over that firewall into a VPN tunnel over internet and then the same route in reverse in Indiana.

I would also be proud when it got that to work.

 

[geniusintraining]

I programmed a light bulb to turn on when they turned a switch.

What would happen if the bulb burns out? I think you should of used a LED

But nice project.... good job

 

[osmanmom]

more amazing when switch on the bulb it transform to watermelon or banana

 

[Discal]

I guess this falls close enough to the given parameters.

I am an average programmer who is self-taught. This being said I never really tried to do work outside of my immediate employ… until. A friend of mine is a millwright and has worked for a tool and die (shop) part time for about twenty years. He came to me asking if by chance, I could help with a project that had come through the shop. They were retrofitting a machine and the company they were contracted by had no one who could program. They asked if the shop could do it and they said no, but would look around. My friend came to me asking if I would help and I agreed only because it would mean extra hours for him at a time when I knew he needed the cash. Fast forward three years and they have started a new automation division that will exceed 600k this year. I will probably jump ship and join the division later this year as their lead programmer.

 

[FactoryTalktotheHand]

A while back I got a job working on a palletizer that hadn't worked for over a year. It was built in 1979 and originally used a Texas Instruments sequencer. At some point in the 80s or 90s it had been replaced with a SLC-150. A few years ago the panel got doused with water and the 150 was bricked. Thankfully, they had a detailed printout of the program as well as a nesting chart. Someone had tried to replace the PLC with a SLC 5/01, but looking at their program they didn't understand the Sequencer instruction any more than I did. So we decided to translate the SLC-150 program into RSLogix 500 and ignore the attempt made with the 5/01.

The SLC-150 program used a lot of SQO instructions, which I had never used before. Nor had I ever seen a SLC-150 program at all before. After studying many manuals intently, I finally worked out a program I felt would work. We replaced the SLC 5/01 with a Micrologix 1400.

On install day, I loaded the program, and the machine took off. There were issues, but they were all mechanical (due to the machine sitting for that long) which were all identified. I didn't have to make a single change to the program. I can't toot my horn too much since I was copying an older program verbatim, but I think I at least should get partial credit considering I had to learn a lot of the concepts from scratch and know enough about the differences between the two processors and instruction sets to compensate correctly.

 

[Phil Buchanan]

more amazing when switch on the bulb it transform to watermelon or banana

You joke but!!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/wireless_banana_portal/

 

[mk42]

You joke but!!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/wireless_banana_portal/

That is fantastic

 

[JaxGTO]

Was helping a co-worker with a system at a refinery one morning. She hit test edits and the whole place started shaking like it was going to fall down. We were not sure if we should untest edits or run! Turned out to be a 5.0 earthquake at just that moment. And yes we untested then ran.

 

[langit01]

nice thread

 

[Ronnie Sullivan]

Was helping a co-worker with a system at a refinery one morning. She hit test edits and the whole place started shaking like it was going to fall down. We were not sure if we should untest edits or run! Turned out to be a 5.0 earthquake at just that moment. And yes we untested then ran.

That is funny.

 

[ASF]

You joke but!!! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01...banana_portal/

It makes me unbelievably happy that things like that exist. Where can I get one?

Was helping a co-worker with a system at a refinery one morning. She hit test edits and the whole place started shaking like it was going to fall down. We were not sure if we should untest edits or run! Turned out to be a 5.0 earthquake at just that moment. And yes we untested then ran.

When I was an apprentice my supervisor and I were trying to find the feed for some street lighting so we could change out a fitting. We were using the site two way radio's and chattering back and forth "is that it?" "nope, still on" and so forth. Then I found what looked like exactly the one, and said "hang on Terry, I think I've found it. I'll just pull this fuse out." I pulled the fuse out and at that exact instant there was a huge BANG! as every single contactor in this massive switchroom dropped out, and all the emergency lights came on. There was a moment of silence and then someone across the other side of the plant picked up the radio and said "uh...[my name]? Maybe you should put that fuse back in."

As it turns out, power had gone out to the whole city, but as an apprentice that was one of those moments where your gut drops a mile