Getting into PLCs
Good day folks. Over at this new workplace of mine, "big boss" we'll call him 
,constantly thrives to find new and "creative" ways of increasing income and increasing the range of services we cover. More often than not, he starts off with average joes like yours truly and slowly trains them or turns them into pros in some field or another, which is a thumbs up for this chap - giving people the opportunity to learn is not something your run of the mill definition of "boss" does, let alone in a big company like this one. Some tend to keep a stiff upper lip towards this approach, no doubt, as they likely think this "litters" the industry with untrained and unqualified personnel, but that also means TWO thumbs up for this guy for giving all of that a middle finger and being like the Schindler of the job market, wrangling mediocre people and giving them a chance to do what they like.
To make a long story.......even longer it is now my turn to be involved in a project which seemed intimidating at first, but turns out it may actually be doable, despite seeming ludicrous at first.
So: a large water treatment facility in our city has reached out in search of someone who can provide setup and maintenance for some of their equipment, electrically and electronically speaking (they may actually require plumbing services as well, but that's not my field). Now imagine my reaction when I heard of that Big Boss, being the visionary and eager chap that he is, has instantly taken them up on this offer, so he took me along with him on a "business meeting" of sorts with the facility's manager where the two of them had a heart-to-heart discussing financial issues as well as what the project involves. Their manager assigned us a worker to takes us on a tour of the facility and show us exactly the equipment in use and what needs to be done to it. Honestly, there's really not much to say: I was expecting something like a huge space with gauges and displays all over the walls and filled with the sound of whirring motors and I was mentally preparing for the challenges that lay ahead, for obviously I know squat about such things....how could you blame me ? Ever since I've started working in the field of electronics, I've only done household stuff, never industrial, so I was rather taken aback by Big Boss's confidence in putting ME (your 1.83 tall - 53Kg skinny chap ) up front and center with these guys basically saying "he's our man for this job"
In reality though, while this facility may have such advanced equipment elsewhere, no doubt about it, in this case it's nothing special: a couple of fenced areas here and there around the compound have some deep holes dug into the ground, kinda like wells, and these house a rig consisting of a vat in which dirty water accumulates and it's then aired out by an air compressor which bubbles in air from the bottom and that helps separate the sludge and debris from the water somehow and then the clear water is dumped out into the canal which this compound belongs to. There's several facilities like these spread throughout the length of this canal from what I understood.
You can now see where this is going: the treatment process as well as anything "below ground" is irrelevant and beside the point. I only mentioned it as a curiosity. What IS important is the automation and probing of these vats: every X hours/days, whatever, the compressor is supposed to come on and bubble the dirty water for Y minutes. When this is done, a valve (or several) open and a pump throws the clean water out in the waterway. This requires some sort of automatic control mechanism for each of these stations. There IS such a system already in place and it works to a degree but it requires some maintenance (some of the vats no longer work and are overflowing with sh!t, quite literally due to the pumps in them failing of becoming clogged), so granted, this isn't a project which we build from the bottom: there is something to work with. Most of these stations are functional and we'll use this available technology to study and understand the system. As I said, we went on a field trip to see these things in operation and have a look at the control panel, which consists of a display+keypad unit to display various sensor readings which are way beyond the scope of the project right now, some relays, MCBs, contactors, but most importantly the brain: the PLC. This particular one is a XC3-14R-E (PDF included). Remember, I had absolutely zero experience with stuff like this, but I was able to grasp the concept surprisingly fast, in less than 1-2 days, thanks to the internet and some very helpful YT vids. You can see the COM interface plugged into the PLC which communicates with the panel there. The panel itself is a TouchWin OP320-A-S. From what I understand, the panel and the PLC are programmed individually and are THEN connected together via that COM cable and if done right, everything should sync up and communicate. Basically it's like an Arduino just without the code part: the proprietary program does the coding for you. You just have to input some parameters and use a surprisingly intuitive graphical interface. The videos I watched in this series were for a SIEMENS PLC, but the concepts seem to be the same. This "XC" family uses a suite called XCP PRO. I even grabbed a copy of it and the manual to study myself, despite not having the actual hardware readily available. The pinnacle of this project shall be implementing some sort of remote monitoring system to allow the head office or whatever to monitor the different parameters of these stations without having to go down into the field, which is what happens at the moment. A communication+software solution has to be implemented, but that's not TOO critical at the moment, though certainly worth the discussion....why not.
Anyone here with experience with PLCs who is willing to share ? Share what exactly, you may ask. Tips, tricks, warnings (don't touch 3 phase 380v with your bare hands while standing in a pool of mud), do's and dont's, the usual, as we usually do here at BC. Some good and easy reads perhaps, for someone who doesn't have a degree in electronics, random thoughts...you know. Cheers guys.
,constantly thrives to find new and "creative" ways of increasing income and increasing the range of services we cover. More often than not, he starts off with average joes like yours truly and slowly trains them or turns them into pros in some field or another, which is a thumbs up for this chap - giving people the opportunity to learn is not something your run of the mill definition of "boss" does, let alone in a big company like this one. Some tend to keep a stiff upper lip towards this approach, no doubt, as they likely think this "litters" the industry with untrained and unqualified personnel, but that also means TWO thumbs up for this guy for giving all of that a middle finger and being like the Schindler of the job market, wrangling mediocre people and giving them a chance to do what they like.To make a long story.......even longer
it is now my turn to be involved in a project which seemed intimidating at first, but turns out it may actually be doable, despite seeming ludicrous at first.So: a large water treatment facility in our city has reached out in search of someone who can provide setup and maintenance for some of their equipment, electrically and electronically speaking (they may actually require plumbing services as well, but that's not my field). Now imagine my reaction when I heard of that
Big Boss, being the visionary and eager chap that he is, has instantly taken them up on this offer, so he took me along with him on a "business meeting" of sorts with the facility's manager where the two of them had a heart-to-heart discussing financial issues as well as what the project involves. Their manager assigned us a worker to takes us on a tour of the facility and show us exactly the equipment in use and what needs to be done to it. Honestly, there's really not much to say: I was expecting something like a huge space with gauges and displays all over the walls and filled with the sound of whirring motors and I was mentally preparing for the challenges that lay ahead, for obviously I know squat about such things....how could you blame me ? Ever since I've started working in the field of electronics, I've only done household stuff, never industrial, so I was rather taken aback by Big Boss's confidence in putting ME (your 1.83 tall - 53Kg skinny chap ) up front and center with these guys basically saying "he's our man for this job" In reality though, while this facility may have such advanced equipment elsewhere, no doubt about it, in this case it's nothing special: a couple of fenced areas here and there around the compound have some deep holes dug into the ground, kinda like wells, and these house a rig consisting of a vat in which dirty water accumulates and it's then aired out by an air compressor which bubbles in air from the bottom and that helps separate the sludge and debris from the water somehow and then the clear water is dumped out into the canal which this compound belongs to. There's several facilities like these spread throughout the length of this canal from what I understood.
You can now see where this is going: the treatment process as well as anything "below ground" is irrelevant and beside the point. I only mentioned it as a curiosity. What IS important is the automation and probing of these vats: every X hours/days, whatever, the compressor is supposed to come on and bubble the dirty water for Y minutes. When this is done, a valve (or several) open and a pump throws the clean water out in the waterway. This requires some sort of automatic control mechanism for each of these stations. There IS such a system already in place and it works to a degree but it requires some maintenance (some of the vats no longer work and are overflowing with sh!t, quite literally due to the pumps in them failing of becoming clogged), so granted, this isn't a project which we build from the bottom: there is something to work with. Most of these stations are functional and we'll use this available technology to study and understand the system. As I said, we went on a field trip to see these things in operation and have a look at the control panel, which consists of a display+keypad unit to display various sensor readings which are way beyond the scope of the project right now, some relays, MCBs, contactors, but most importantly the brain: the PLC. This particular one is a XC3-14R-E (PDF included). Remember, I had absolutely zero experience with stuff like this, but I was able to grasp the concept surprisingly fast, in less than 1-2 days, thanks to the internet and some very helpful YT vids. You can see the COM interface plugged into the PLC which communicates with the panel there. The panel itself is a TouchWin OP320-A-S. From what I understand, the panel and the PLC are programmed individually and are THEN connected together via that COM cable and if done right, everything should sync up and communicate. Basically it's like an Arduino just without the code part: the proprietary program does the coding for you. You just have to input some parameters and use a surprisingly intuitive graphical interface. The videos I watched in this series were for a SIEMENS PLC, but the concepts seem to be the same. This "XC" family uses a suite called XCP PRO. I even grabbed a copy of it and the manual to study myself, despite not having the actual hardware readily available. The pinnacle of this project shall be implementing some sort of remote monitoring system to allow the head office or whatever to monitor the different parameters of these stations without having to go down into the field, which is what happens at the moment. A communication+software solution has to be implemented, but that's not TOO critical at the moment, though certainly worth the discussion....why not.
Anyone here with experience with PLCs who is willing to share ? Share what exactly, you may ask. Tips, tricks, warnings (don't touch 3 phase 380v with your bare hands while standing in a pool of mud
), do's and dont's, the usual, as we usually do here at BC. Some good and easy reads perhaps, for someone who doesn't have a degree in electronics, random thoughts...you know. Cheers guys.
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