I have been an electrician for 5 years and a software developer in the energy sector for 3-4 years now and im doing industrial automation on the side for now.

From where i sit, the biggest issue i see when IT people treat historian data as the "source of truth". No concept of deadbanding, scan cycles or accuracy classes. They build alerting on top of data that have been compressed multiple times before it hit the cloud and they wonder why operators often discard them.

What do you guy do when the "IT guys" comes and ask for "alle the data"? what do they often get wrong and what would you want them to understand from the OT side?

Was offered a role for I&C Engineer with a MEP engineering consulting firm.

What’s the work like? I’ve only ever been in manufacturing automation/systems integrations (PLCs, SCADA, Collab Robots) so I’m hoping to get a little insight.

Thanks!

Currently an electrician and have been working in industrial controls for a couple years. And I think I want pursue automation work full time. Bought a micro850 and have been doing some small projects on my trainer set up at home. Thinking about going back to school for electrical engineering technology degree. Is it worth it to pair up with my electrical license?

I have a bank of g120 drives connected to an SSI absolute multiturn encoder everything works untill a power cycle the drive it resets the position back to 0, any ideas on something I'm missing?

Hi,

Can a Siemens MTP400 Unified Basic (6AV2123-3DB32-0AW0) communicate directly with a Siemens LOGO! 8 12/24RCE (6ED1052-1MD08-0BA2)?

I'm using TIA Portal V19 and I can't find a LOGO! communication driver in the HMI connections.

Has anyone done this successfully?

Thanks!

I'm comparing options for small XYZ automation project and the old recommendations still seem to be Yaskawa, Mitsubishi, Omron, SEW, Kollmorgen, and Rockwell. What I’m less clear on is how people are choosing now when EtherCAT, cabinet space, diagnostics and multi-axis coordination matter more than they used to.

Would you still default to the established PLC-matched platform or consider something more specialized like Elmo Motion Control or Copley?

I have been doing this long enough now where I am in the "too scared to ask" camp.

In the context of a sequence that does something e.g. fills a tank with water.

Permissive: is the tank empty/are you resuming from an interrupted fill

->Disables start button if not true

Interlock: the pump has a fault on it

->Disables start button if true

->If the sequence is running stop

Fault:
a critical process condition that has gone wrong, stops sequence

-> High level sensor is triggered

Alarm:
a non-critical process condition, does not stop sequence

Filling is taking a long time but I don't want to stop, just alert the situation to someone

It seems to me that a fault condition should also exist as a permissive, e.g. you faulted on high level, you can start because you are at high level.

Both a fault an alarm will end up in a log.
What do you do with an interlock?

I normally add an alarm to alert if a sequence has not ended correctly, but then you still have to do some investigation to match oh the thing faulted then my sequence stopped.

What I have done in the past is treated interlocks only as thing the inhibit a start, and used faults as something that stops, not using permissives and alarms, in the context of a sequence.

Can someone smarter give me some insight in how to think about these 4 buzz words

Title says it all. I'm looking to see if anyone has had trouble installing KS2000 on their Windows 11 system, and if they were able to resolve it. I've gone and added the required windows features like HyperV, installing from an admin account, and modified the registry to disable incompatible services. Every time results in the same issue, the install bar fills completely and then the system just hangs on the full bar.

I don't want to write all the steps I've attempted, incase it discourages someone from suggesting something that I may have overlooked.

Thanks

Does anyone know of a (straight M12 4-pin A-Code male)-to-(straight M12 8-pin A-Code female) cable? Or connector?

I want to connect an IFM (LR8000) level sensor to a LUMBERG (RKF 4/0.5M) receptacle. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

I recently was involved in a microgrid project, and the HMI is so clean and neat. It leaves me wondering why HMIs' lines don't look so elegant. And its layout is perfect for situational awareness.

Has anyone designed their own HMI, and if so, which programming language did you use?

Just went full time at the facility I interned with in college. I work in our maintenance department for the facility and they are allowing me to specialize in Controls and VFDs for the plant. I understand controls and VFDs pretty well the area I lack most in is Understanding the process of the facility. I work in the Pulp and Paper industry and was curious if anyone had tips or advice for an up and coming EE who wants to build a career in controls. Anything Helps. Thanks!

P.S.

Work mostly on Allen Bradley Products

My main area I lack in controls is the networking side of it