Memories of the very first PLC project

AMAZINGAHMED

I have been around PLC for 9 years, involved into tens of projects and faced hundreds of challenges. I remember my first days at my company where I didn't even know what a PLC is.

I was lucky that I was assigned as a helper in a project after only a few days. That was a chance I had to take very seriously as a starting point for building my experience.

That project was a batching system for fodders (animals food). We had many silos (27) and one weigher, where the customer set his recipe and the weighing procedure goes automatically. We used than S7-200 for that system.

I remember the smell was horrible when the system starts, but I did not complain so as not to look the whiney green guy.

My role was the HMI (I had to take a fast track instructions from my leader and learn the rest on my own) and the result was a really goo HMI that I'm proud of until today.

One of the tricks I learned at that project is to always connect the SHIELD, because it removes a lot of interference.

I also remember that I had to travel about 160 Km from my home to the factory and 160 Km back everyday. That was a hard start, but it tested me if I was to continue in that field.

I'm sure that most of the people here have tons of interesting stories to share. I think that the campaign is the best chance to hear the biggest number of stories.

It is was so amazing years ago!!! Long journey playing with Siemens different families

Hello dear colleagues,

For me the first project with PLC was 7 and a half years ago, actually it was my first job as a professional (just graduated from college).

It was an upgrade from SCL to contrologix, DH+ to controlnet, and RSView32 to RSView ME (in that time I use to think that Rockwell PLC’s were better than Siemens but not anymore J). It was a shampoo plant and the main function of the PLC’s was to control the transferring of the product from the storing tanks to the bottle filling machinery, also to control the pipe rinse and cleanup sequences.

I still remember how excited I was on that time, because when I was in college I use to think I will like to work in automation.

Regards.

Vithani

First, Its nice to read all of above posts.. I feel like we all are sitting at one round table and talking about pasts and all...

Now, why only for PLC???

I would like to write about my first drive commissioning

Well, I studied so many times and checked panels at our office but never commissioned and my first commissioning was for crane in one of the steel plant very far from my place

It was a bit exciting for me because I was commissioning alone and for the first time I went that far - but guess what For in my first commissioning, when we gave 3 phase supply to drive, pre charging resistor blew up... I was shocked... to add my shock, customer replaced drive and when we started that, again smoke came out... oh.. what a feel.. then we replaced DBU too and again start same drive and thank god .. this time it was working (don't know problem was forming or DBU)

Then, I commissioned so many drives, and then I went abroad first time - here I faced some hardware fault and first time I opened drive, more over I faced some problem in parameter settings too - at this time I first joined this forum to get help and at that time, campaign was running (I didn't knew that time) and for each question, I was getting very quick reply. This thing attracted me to come here often, and today I must say whatever I know about drives, 50% contribution is from this forum

I would like to thank AMAZINGAHMEDfor starting such a wonderful thread which refreshed nice memory

Regards,
Devesh Vithani

Thank you for sharing those nice (not so nice for you at the past) memories. But looking at your consecutive drive blows, do you think that you should have fed the 3 phase to the drive from the output side (with incandescent lamps in the way) for the capacitors to charge at first?beacuse drives tend to loose charge due to storage.

AMAZINGAHMED

Thank you for sharing those nice (not so nice for you at the past) memories. But looking at your consecutive drive blows, do you think that you should have fed the 3 phase to the drive from the output side (with incandescent lamps in the way) for the capacitors to charge at first?beacuse drives tend to loose charge due to storage.

Thanks AMAZINGAHMED

This has really triggered old memories .... My First PLC .. how can I forget .. it was in Eighties that I started with S5-110A PLC programming.

I remember we had a PG-675 ( What was closest to a Portable programmer in thise days ) which used to have two Floppy Drives ( 5 1/4" !! ) .. one for Booting with the STEP5 program and another for user program.( I have attached a picture I found on the net for the newer programmers who may have never seen such a "PORTABLE" programmer )

Since PG675 could not connect online to S5-110A , we had to Burn EPROMS every time ( After erasing them with UV Erasers). It took a good Half Hour to Erase the EPROMS. Plug the EPROM in the CPU and check the logic. For any changes the whole process was repeated again.

We must have Erased amd Burned the EPROM more than 20 times !!!!!

Soon after we had S5-100U , 115U and 135U with Online program testing and we felt that it was a generation leap in PLC programming ....

Amazingly, this S5-110A worked for more than 25 years and eventually I was involed in replacing it with a S7-300 system.

Cheers

Navnag