PLC Programming Job With Zero Experience: Stay or Go Back to School?

How's it going everyone? Vlad here, and welcome back to our weekly discussion about the most upvoted discussions in our industry, which is industrial automation and manufacturing. Today, we're gonna be tackling some of which are technical, some of which are business, and some of them are going to be more career-oriented.

So without any further delay, let's get into it

First control panel build: any advice?

So our first question/comment comes from the user, IMitchellR, and they say, "Any advice? First time." There's a couple of images of a control panel that they have built, and we can scroll through them in just a moment. But the comment says, "It's my first panel after learning with Arduino and working with filling and capping machines in a process line till packaging for four years.

I'm planning to add on HMI buttons and fans for cooling Before I start the actual wiring, I'm looking forward to see if I can do something to improve on what I've got so far. This is a beginner thing made mostly to learn more of the programming sense. I already made basic, basic stuff, but with everything laying and hanging around, so this is my first enclosure.

Any feedback will be much appreciated. So again, important to keep in mind, obviously, this is not probably a production-ready panel. It's for learning purposes. So of course, we will be giving him a pass on a couple of things. But let's, uh, let's take a look. Again, the image hopefully can zoom in for us better than that, and it doesn't look like, like it.

So this is the most zoomed in we can get. So we do have a couple of breakers in the top left of the panel. We see a one-ten plug. Again, this is probably going to go to a regular outlet. We have a power supply which probably steps us down to twenty-four volts for the switch as well as the PLC. We've got the SIMATIC S7-200 series smart.

The S7-200 Smart is obsolete

As far as I know, these have been made obsolete, so obviously there is the question of do you want to program in SIMATIC Manager or something on TIA Portal, so perhaps there's an opportunity. For those that haven't seen this PLC sitting behind me, it's the Siemens S7-1200 series G2, so the second generation of the S7-1200 series, something perhaps that can be ordered, and placed inside of that panel.

We do have a unmanaged five-port switch. At least that's what it looks like. I don't believe this is a managed series. We have some terminal blocks, I would assume to line the twenty-four volts based on the labels. Again, I've not seen these types of blocks used for low voltage. They strike me a little bit more as one-ten at the very least, if not used for three-phase normally.

And we have a bunch of relays in the bottom right corner. I don't have many comments, right? So there's a really good wire way connected for the panel, so the wires, once they are laid out, should be nice and neat. So this is a pretty good job in my opinion, at least for a first panel, especially that's gonna be used for training purposes.

Coming from a background of Arduino, again, embedded systems, I would assume everybody knows what Arduino is at this point. I had a very similar, I would say, upbringing when it comes to my career. In university, I was a very heavy user of Arduinos as well as Raspberry Pis, which is what you can find on this channel if you dig back to multiple videos ago on my personal channel.

I started off creating content on primarily Arduinos and then transitioned into control systems once I landed my first job inside of industrial automation and manufacturing. So again, not a whole lot to say on this panel. they, the user said that they will be adding an HMI, which is awesome to interface with the PLC.

And so that should be very good for learning purposes

Hi, my name is Vladimir Romanov. I am the founder of Joltech as well as Solis PLC. With a background in electrical engineering and an MBA, and over a decade of experience leading projects in manufacturing and industrial automation, I help engineers, managers, and manufacturers make smarter technical and business decisions, modernize their operations, and build stronger careers.

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Lost three weeks into a new PLC programming job

The next question that we have is related to working in industrial automation and manufacturing, and of course, it carries a lot of stress that might be different than what you have experienced while you are in university or college or learning, so to speak, than the transition and the actual employment.

And so we're going to talk about that. We're going to first read the question, and I'll share some of my personal experiences, of course, as it relates to this specific topic

So the question comes from the username emergencylemon788, and they say, "I feel, like, lost in my new PLC programming job. Should I have gone back to school first? I graduated with a bachelor's in computer science, but after a year before graduating, I realized I wanted to do something more hands-on instead of sitting behind a desk all day.

I became interested in industrial maintenance and instrumentation and considered going back to school for an associate's degree. Instead, I accepted a PLC programmer job despite having zero PLC experience. I was told I'd get some training and support, but after one day of introduction, I've mostly been left on my own.

I'm now three weeks in and feel completely lost. It's not that easy to ask questions to my peers because they are sit around in the country and I am still in the office. Also, the main job is just programming and not finding physical fault or building binding. That's for technician on site. Should I stick with the job and learn as I go, or would I have been smarter to go formal education and industrial maintenance and instrumentation first?"

So I've got a, a lot of opinions on this side, but really quickly, I wanted to give my story of how I got into industrial automation

So I studied electrical engineering in university. I did a traditional accredited four-year program in Canada, which generally, if you compare to the US program, is more of an equivalent of a bachelor's as well as a master's because we do go to school for a couple of extra years on top of high school education.

So when I graduated, I had absolutely no knowledge of PLCs, of HMIs, of automation, or anything related to manufacturing. My original schooling was in power and renewable energy systems, but I had developed an interest in embedded systems like the Arduino, like the Raspberry Pi. I still remember building circuit boards during my years in school.

And so basically, when I started applying to jobs, I had no knowledge of what industrial automation would entail. And once I landed my first job with Procter & Gamble, I was promised something very similar to what this user is describing. "You will be sent to training, you will be onboarded properly, you will be exposed to all sorts of systems before we let you loose and work on your own."

And my story is very similar. I still remember how when I joined the company, I was immediately put on projects. I had some peers that I can connect with because I was at the plant level, and so a lot of them have been working at the plant for twenty years, some of them ten years, some of them a little bit less.

But ultimately, I could ask questions when it comes to the actual plant environment. Where I felt I lacked quite a bit of training was, of course, programming inside of, in that case, Studio 5000, RSLogix 5000, RSLogix 500. So a lot of it was on the Rockwell suite. And I remember by the time I was sent to official Rockwell automation training, I knew more than the course was teaching because I had no choice but to learn on my own, but also apply some of that learning inside of projects.

Why going back to school is the wrong move

So going back to the actual question, I don't believe that the answer is going back to school. I believe that the answer is to continue to learn. I do believe that the managers or whomever brought this person on board completely understand where they are. They understand that they don't have any experience in this field, and that it will take them some time to get proficient in PLC programming or development of these systems, and hopefully will be there when things take a turn for the worse. It means if there's delays, if there's any challenges. The second point that I want to make is that if you don't ask, you will not receive. So if you do believe that you need more experience, if you want to purchase some kind of a learning program, if you want to go to courses in person, you need to ask your management and make the case for it.

How to ask your manager for training and get a yes

You need to explain to them exactly what you've said on the post, that you are unable to perform some of the tasks because you lack experience. I would assume that you didn't lie in your interview and tell them that you have ten years of PLC programming experience, and they understand that you do need to get some training on that front to be more efficient.

So what I would encourage is, number one, stay in the role. This is really good experience and really difficult to get into. But number two, ask for help. Ask them, be transparent, explain to them that you would like to go to program XYZ. Make it easy for them to say yes. You have already found the program.

You know exactly what you would like to learn. This is what it would cost. This is how long it will take, and this will benefit the company as a result of you going through that specific training. So the, the answer is, on my side, do not go back to school. You already have a job that you have been accepted to.

That means they see the opportunity for you to perform in that specific role, and I think that you will do exceptionally well once you perhaps gain a little bit of training, gain some confidence, and work, through a couple of probably months and/or years.

Is there a lack of PLC tutorials on YouTube?

The next question is extremely relatable. I would assume that many of you know that I had started the Solis PLC YouTube channel, which turned into a training company years ago now. But the early days was basically me posting tutorials on PLCs on YouTube

And so the question comes from the username

stockcompetition54, and they say, "Is there a lack of PLC tutorials on YouTube? Hi, guys. One thing that I noticed is the extreme lack of well-done tutorials on YouTube regarding PLC software compared to other more orthodox software fields. Everything looks so outdated. Am I the only one? Is it because of the complexity of the field?

Maybe it's because of gatekeeping." And I have a lot of thoughts on this front, of course, having done many, many hundreds, I would say, tutorials on YouTube on this point. So is there a lack of PLC tutorials on YouTube? I would generally say yes but especially for platforms that are not Rockwell and Siemens.

So is there an extreme lack? I would say no. There's generally, if you look for any platform, you will find tutorials. And are they state-of-the-art? Are they excellent? Maybe, maybe not. In some cases, they are old. They are ten plus years old. But the truth is our industry moves relatively slowly, so something that was built ten years ago is still incredibly relevant today in twenty twenty-six.

So I don't believe that there's a need to just revamp the tutorial. What's important is to look at the changes that have been happening since that specific platform has been released. Anything that I have created on the Rockwell side in Studio and RSLogix is extremely relevant. I still work with PLCs that have RSLogix, PLCs that have RSLogix five even, or PLC- fives, and the concepts remain the exact same.

The firmware hasn't changed, the UI hasn't changed. So is there a benefit to creating a nicer-looking tutorial? Maybe you can capture some audience based on that. But again, the technical concepts remain the same. The question is, is it because of complexity in the field? Maybe it's because of gatekeeping.

Well, number one, the hardware and software are extremely expensive in our field. Not everyone has access to the hardware needed for the training materials. And you can go and purchase, for example, a PLC or an HMI on eBay for a couple of hundreds of dollars. But if you want to demonstrate advanced topics, and this is something that I have even struggled with in the past, if you want to put together a kit on, let's say, motion controls.

We're talking about large servo drive. We're talking about the kinetics platform, for example. We're talking about Surcos. We're talking about the Siemens drives. It becomes incredibly, incredibly expensive to showcase something on a test bench

as opposed to a simulation. And again, what I mean by that is you can certainly simulate a lot of things on the PLC, but if you want to create a really good tutorial on motion control and you want to invest in kinetics, for example, you're looking at tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment alone.

So of course, there is complexity, but also cost of pay to play, so to speak, in that essence. Is it because of gatekeeping? Again, I would love to see more distributors and systems integrators create a lot of these tutorials for awareness purposes. I don't believe it's because of gatekeeping. I believe that the only people that create this kind of content are the ones who are interested in creating, not only building the engineering side.

And I'm even myself wrestle with this concept sometimes. Do I spend more time building the actual solutions and systems for customers, or do I take the time to create the videos? And the only reason why I have been doing videos for so long is because I have enjoyed it for over a decade. I remember creating videos in university while I was studying.

The worst motion control workaround I have seen

That being said, not everyone has that passion. Not everyone is interested in sharing that information. So they're perfectly happy with building systems within the companies. They're perfectly happy with sharing some of that information. They don't have the extra two, three hours a day needed to create the content.

I don't think it's gatekeeping. It is just personal interest and hobbies that you decide to pursue over the years.

We've got a very interesting technical discussion as our next post. I will do my best to read through it and see if we can understand what is actually going on. There's of course a lot of documents involved, so I will give you my opinion at first glance and of course be the judge yourself

So this comes from the username DesMoteo, and they say, "Worst workaround I've ever written." We have some basic structured text with some if, then, else, and if statements. And they say, "In my motion application using can open, I need to work with an axis whose speed changes continuously as it approaches a target position," which is normal.

There's probably some kind of a PID loop.

MC_JOG, JOG_LXM32 and the velocity that will not change

I don't have fixed thresholds I can use. I initially thought about using the MC_JOG function, which conveniently exposes a velocity parameter. There's actually another function block specifically designed for the drive called JOG_LXM32. Again, there's links to some of the documents which I assume explain both of those functions.

I am not familiar with this specific setup. They say the problem with the specific JOG_LXM32 block is that it doesn't allow you to change the speed while it's running. In my case, I would have to continuously trigger the forward backward inputs, true false, true false, so that the new speed gets picked up.

Alternatively, I could use something like MC_MOVE velocity, but here too the velocity is only read on the rising edge of execute, so I'd have the same problem. It basically becomes a state machine inside another state machine. After some testing, I found that the standard MC_JOG works perfectly. The commanded velocity can be changed while the block is executing.

So far so good. The problem is that sometimes when the instruction starts again, even though the input velocity is correct, the drive receives the wrong velocity, specifically the velocity from the previous movement. As a result, the jog has a commanded velocity and an actual drive velocity that don't match.

I tried configuring the PDOs to be synchronous in order to force the control variables to be transmitted, but it didn't change anything. The only way I found to fix this issue was to keep changing the velocity variable going into the block, which apparently triggers a new transmission to the drive. So how did I solve it?

As shown in the attached picture, the way the velocity is constantly rewritten to values too different from the previous one, which triggers a write to the drive. Without a doubt, this is the worst workaround I have ever written, and I actually felt guilty for having done it, but the customer was fine with it.

What a mess. Um, again, and this reveals the general state of industrial automation. So if you haven't been in our industry long enough, you probably cannot appreciate how challenging some of these platforms might be, especially in niche, what I would say, applications like the motion instructions.

So the original thought, I would assume, of this person was to use the canned instruction, as they have listed and pointed links to from the manufacturer. And then you start to run into problems, and the true embodiment of industrial automation is the ability to integrate these custom builds in a way that works for a specific application.

And in many instances, you're not able to take path A, so you're going to path B. You're not able to take path B, so you take path C. And this is exactly what they have done. They have found a clever way of going around this velocity restriction on the drive and toggling it to send the value as it updates to the drive.

Dynamic gearing as the Rockwell alternative

I have worked in similar applications, and again, it is always just as complex, I would say, if not more. The solutions that I had built on the Rockwell side involved not changing the velocity of the drive, but changing the dynamic gearing of the drive. So when you start running drives in Studio and RSLogix five thousand, what you can do is dynamically change the gearing between that drive and the virtual drive.

So instead of writing the velocity function, you would basically change the gearing, and it could be, let's say one, it's one to one, then you go to point nine, so it's one to point nine, therefore slowing down the drive or speeding up, of course, dynamically. And I would say that there's nothing wrong with what was done here in a general sense.

It seems like the true issue is the fact that you cannot, for whatever reason, use these blocks to change the speed of the drive while it is running. So Obviously probably worth a look if there's some kind of a different way to address this velocity situation. It's probably worth calling the manufacturer and asking them how this is done, as I would assume this is not some kind of a brand new application.

There must have-- this must have been done before, and there's probably just different functions that are maybe buried underneath a lot of documentation and a lot of different websites that do have an instruction that allows them to do exactly as described, which is to write the velocity while the drive is running.

But again, this is a very clever way of accomplishing exactly what is needed, which is very frequently the use case in our industry. And as long as the customer is happy with how the equipment is behaving and there's no adverse effects perhaps on the equipment, I would say that this is perfectly acceptable

PanelView 7 Plus download and communication errors

All right, we've got our last technical question in this instance of the week, which is an interesting one. I love applications when it comes to PLCs and HMIs together. Of course, there's going to be a lot of different problems when it comes to panel views and older designs. So let's take a look at what the user says and see if we can help them out.

And just a preview, they've already solved the issue apparently, down below, but we'll discuss what it takes in some of these instances So this is a comment and a question by the username bravefuel7159. They say, "PanelView 7 Plus download issues." We have a couple of images. We'll take a look at them in just one moment.

They say, "Hello. Having an issue where I do a download to the PanelView, I seem to be losing things on the screen/communication errors. In FactoryTalk View Studio, when I test the application, everything works fine. I can open the runtime file I created and everything is also fine, but for whatever reason, the download to the PanelView is somehow isn't.

Any help is appreciated." Let's see. Update. Turns out the PLC just needed a little firmware update. Very interesting. I guess if we click on the image and get an- We can't zoom in, but I'm assuming that they are just unable to get the tags to this panel view, right? So it tells us-- I don't see any question marks.

Usually, you have those like asterisk type of symbols when you're looking at a panel view that can't connect. It seems that they're getting some kind of an issue with this. But in any case, we're looking at an HMI that's not connected. And let's take a moment to comment a little bit on the HMI design.

There's a ton of comments in the thread telling how bad the screen is. This is not the worst screen that I have seen, so I will say that, it does look pretty bad, but I've seen worse. There's a lot of different colors. It looks like it's one of those palletizing exit systems where you have redirects to different areas.

Maybe it is some kind of a shrink wrapper here. From what I can see, there's vacuum sensors. I'm not exactly sure why. Pre-edger, re-edger. So again, I'm not sure what the exact application is, but to me this looks like one of those pallets that comes off the palletizer, it gets shrink wrapped, and then gets redirected to different areas.

Why the RSLinx Enterprise path is the real suspect

A-again, it's not critically important what it looks like. The question on the connectivity side. if you've worked with these applications for long enough, and I have a ton of tutorials on Solis PLC when it comes to FactoryTalk View ME, the critical component is the path from the HMI to the PLC, and very frequently that path is different from when you're testing on the local environment versus when you are testing on the actual HMI or when you're deploying to the actual HMI.

So usually when I first troubleshoot these applications, I start looking at the path inside of RSLinx Enterprise, which again, if you open FactoryTalk View Studio ME, you will find on the bottom left-hand corner. Obviously, there can be issues with regards to the firmware. I am surprised that that's the PLC side because usually when you build a path, you can specify the PLC firmware of your choice inside of Studio, and typically your Panel View, seven plus should talk to PLCs as old as PLC-5s.

You should be able to find those drivers. So I am surprised that that was the resolution. It seems to me more, and this is just a hypothesis, what probably happened is as a result of flashing the PLC firmware, they had to go back and check the path to that PLC, reselect the PLC, and re-add that driver inside of RSLinx Enterprise on the FactoryTalk View ME side, which probably reset something that allowed it to communicate at the end of the day.

Uh, but once again, I think it always boils down to the pathing inside of the RSLogix that's going to run on the panel view. And again, if you're stuck, if you're unable to figure this out, don't hesitate to reach out, send me a message. Always happy to help. I know that this is not always as easy as I'm explaining it.

Wrap up

There could be a lot of different other issues that are not covered in what I can say in just a couple of moments, but usually it relates to that network problem. So in any case, that's all we have for you today. I hope to see you next week. If you have interesting comments, if you have different thoughts on what has been said here, make sure to leave us a comment.

Obviously, always appreciate kind comments, and if you want to like the video so that more people can see it, appreciate, and I will see you next time