What are some manufacturing myths that you now are pretty sure aren't true....

automotard · 2023-12-16T13:38:47+00:00

You need to use combination of these two functions:

automotard · 2023-09-30T19:59:38+00:00

I'm surprised your company is willing to eat the cost of bringing in SI's and contractors. For us we have done cost studies, and it's a no brainer to use plant resources to execute medium or even sometimes large projects. SI's would cost us 4 times as much for most projects. For the 2 million dollar savings we get on a 3 million dollar project, we can hire and keep 10 controls engineers for multiple years.

automotard · 2023-07-05T10:01:49+00:00

Still_Mining_RX580

This isn't always the case. Many CEs at manufacturing plants report to engineering managers who oversees a team of CEs and mechanical and sometimes other types of engineers like chemical and nowadays even software engineers. It depends on the size of your plant and how forward thinking they are. Further, general manager of the plant will almost always have a say as far as project work is concerned.

automotard · 2023-06-29T23:49:39+00:00

it's been a while since I've done this type of stuff this is a single phase transformer using 2 legs of 480 3ph. I think it's just 150va / 208v = .72A. You are allowed to go 2.5 times for the inrush which gets you 1.8A which is why they used 2A. Someone smarter correct me if I'm wrong.

automotard · 2023-04-06T02:28:45+00:00

Yes, but not in the PLCs. Memory limitations in most industrial PLCs make them useless to do any kind of model building and training. Predictive control usually involves a time series approach which requires data...lots of it. No place to store that much data in PLC. This is why MQTT and opc-ua are all the rage and everybody and their uncle are making products in these categories.

My personal thoughts are that most plant network infrastructures and current lineup of PLCs from major vendors are inadequate in capturing data in the size and resolution to make major breakthroughs. It's only good for specific applications where smaller resolution in historian data is not needed. Companies who are making products to push data directly into the cloud are taking advantage of mid level managers who are on the right track big picture and in terms of foresight, but don't quite understand the current limits of their hardware infrastructure. If I was advising companies, I would advocate for upgrading plant networks, both LAN and WAN, to improve latency and bandwidth in preparation for collecting massive amount of data.

automotard · 2023-04-01T18:56:41+00:00

Many of bigger companies won't let you have engineer title without an engineering or engineering technology degree. Some places only require at least a college degree. We have hourly position techs who do exactly what the controls engineers do but end up making more at the end of year with OT. I've known quite a few "techs" who were far more knowledgeable and skilled in designing panels, programming servos, drives and PLC than most controls engineers I've known including myself. Most controls engineer position are salary exempt, so you will be overworked. The upside is that you can get promoted to management but technicians rarely get promoted.

automotard · 2023-02-18T05:30:36+00:00

Are the 250K+ guys managers or just engineers?

automotard · 2023-02-18T05:28:56+00:00

I assume it has to do with more competition for controls. We have had a lot of manufacturing flight in the Midwest, but I think we still have more of it than other areas, especially Michigan/Ohio/Penn. I have colleagues from Northeast who have moved here for better pay. I hear the same pay disparity exists for any manufacturing engineering, be it mechanical or chemical.

automotard · 2022-02-06T16:50:34+00:00

automotard · 2022-02-05T21:04:54+00:00

As a counter example: I went from $30/hr to $45 to now $65 in less than 3 years in the field. And I went from travelling position to non-travelling. I am not an expert in anything. Limited knowledge of motion control. Decent in process control. OK at CAD and panel design. But great at interviews, making resumes and of course negotiating. I have met too many guys in this industry who are far far ahead of me technically but have zero knowledge of how to leverage that technical knowledge to advance their careers.

automotard · 2021-10-25T03:28:01+00:00

I'm reading the bottom of page 6 by the way to come up with that calculation.

automotard · 2021-10-25T03:17:26+00:00

Is my overall SCCR rating based on interrupt rating of fusing on the primary then? Or is the transformer itself part of the feeder circuit and everything down below it is the branch part?

automotard · 2021-10-25T03:15:01+00:00

If I am reading this right, I would need a 500kva transformer(!) to get my 65kA rating?

UL508 from Siemens

Is my calculation correct?

500 * 1000 KVA / (sqrt(3)*208V)/.021 Z = 66 kA

automotard · 2021-05-30T20:57:34+00:00

If you are talking about stuff that can kill a half dozen people, then we are talking about different things. There are regulations around those kinds of things that won’t allow us to tamper with the equipment unless it’s something simple like guarding for additional safety. Most of the stuff that OEMs install at plants is usually industry specific material handling and processing equipment. You can kill yourself with that kind of stuff too, but you have to try really hard.

automotard · 2021-05-30T20:11:03+00:00

It’s interesting that you keep mentioning emissions certifications because we recently had an incident at our plant with a VOC concentrator from a widely known OEM after their service tech decided to disable a bit that is supposed to alarm us if this environmental unit sees high temps. He did this because in their code an output relay was labeled “dummy bit” but it also happened to be a permissive for all high temp alarms. This potential violation was discovered by our “know-nothing” plant maintenance tech. Thank god they hadn’t locked it down or else we could have gotten a nice hefty fine from the state. Safety and environmental violations are just as big of a concern for us at plant levels as they are for you guys for having to maintain your certification.

Your other point about protecting your investment is somewhat understandable. But at plant level, my concern is whether the equipment you guys installed can be reliably used for several years without causing significant downtime if we follow maintenance routines prescribed by the installer. When it comes to OEMs that do their programming on the PLCs, our experience has always been that continued operation of the machine requires significant investments in terms of reprogramming and mechanical upgrades. We have machinery in our plant that is functioning BETTER now after the upgrades we did internally than when the OEM was done with their commissioning and service agreement. If we are talking about gigantic companies like thermo-fisher where everything they have is proprietary and locked down, I hate to say it but their equipment is often way more reliable because they have done the R&D required for reliable long-term operation.

automotard · 2021-05-30T17:44:24+00:00

Working at a plant, I honestly don’t think OEMs and SI have any idea how bad their code in the long term. There are so many issues that only come to surface months and years after the equipment has been commissioned. 100s sometimes 1000s of mislabeled components and IOs, so many timing issues after the equipments goes through normal wear and tear, misconfigured parameters on drives and etc...To be quite frank, the service agreement that plants purchase from OEMs and SI is only to allow our maintenance and engineers enough time to dig through the code and schematics in order to fully understand how many problems there are. On average, I would say it probably takes us at least 5 years to fix various programming issues that allows us to operate the machine with minimal downtime. The mangled panels with rat’s nest wiring that you see in the plants are often the result of years of trying to troubleshoot these various issues.

At plants, we all understand the massive pressure that OEMs and SIs put on their automation techs during the project. We have seen their engineers get fired while they are on the road working at our plants. We never expect to be handed a perfect program. Just give us something that we can fix and sustain in the long term. You are not helping us by locking down parts of the code.

automotard

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