In industrial automation, the words permissive and interlock are often used as if they mean the same thing.
They do not.
Both are conditions that influence whether equipment is allowed to operate, …
Read MoreArtificial Intelligence is moving into industrial automation faster than many technicians expected.
AI is beginning to appear in engineering tools, predictive maintenance systems, digital twins, robotics, machine vision, process optimization, and …
Read MoreThere is a message becoming increasingly common in industrial automation:
Take a PLC course, learn ladder logic, become a PLC programmer, and start making great money.
There is some truth inside that …
Read MoreA PLC programmer does not need to be a chemical engineer, mechanical engineer, process engineer, electrician, instrumentation specialist, and machine designer all at the same time.
But there is another extreme …
Read MoreA PLC program can work perfectly and still be difficult to troubleshoot.
That distinction matters.
When we first learn ladder logic, the goal is usually simple:
Make the motor run.
Later, the goal becomes …
Read MoreOne of the most useful PLC programming patterns a technician can learn is also one of the simplest:
Trigger → Hold-In → Interrupt
The idea is straightforward.
Something starts the action.
Something keeps it …
Read MoreIn industrial PLC programming, there are often several ways to make the same machine work.
Two of the most common methods for maintaining a control condition are Seal-In logic and Latch/Unlatch …
Read MoreWhen working with Allen-Bradley ControlLogix or CompactLogix systems, one of the first architectural decisions a programmer eventually faces is how to handle physical I/O inside the PLC program.
At the beginning, …
Read MoreIn the previous article, we compared three common ways of representing PLC I/O:
Direct physical I/O
Alias Tags
Mapped controller tags
Now it is time to build the mapping layer itself.
For digital signals, one …
Read MoreAs Studio 5000 projects become larger, tag organization becomes increasingly important.
A small machine may only have a few motors, valves, sensors, and alarms. In that type of project, individual tags …
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