Hello,
My name is Ettore (‘E’ for short) and I am a newbie EE straight out of University. I was recently hired by a small engineering/CAD firm who are in process of expanding into a full-fledged manufacturing/engineering facility in the next, say, year or so. Part of this expansion plan was to take their biggest money pit -paying outsourced controls guys for their controls stuff- and hire a new guy (me) to do it instead.
Well, this is a GREAT opportunity for me because I am now the only EE guy here and, thus, top of the food chain in that respect. However, it isn't good because my employers do not appear to have an exact plan of how to get from here (newbie EE guy) to there (Controls/Pneumatics guru) in the 6 months that they have allotted. This is where (I am hoping) this forum and it’s plethora of expertise comes in.
The types of jobs that we generally deal with are relatively simple in nature. Lots of proximities, cylinders, etc in relatively small scale ($1,000,000 project would be HUGE for us). Most of our machines are designed to replace one person to maybe a few simple jobs but typically involve at least one robot (usually Fanuc or ABB). For example, we are currently designing a system that loads crates of spark plugs which are then staged onto a rotating pallet by our new robot. A second robot (existing) then picks them up from the staged area and installs them into an engine. If it matters, I have no idea what type of PLCs we typically use; nor do any of the people that work here. I saw one CAD drawing with a GE VersaMax and I know that one of our customers (at least) is A-B only.
Where am I now? Well, when I got here they had nothing for me to do so I started reading CAD/manufacturing standards for all the companies that we deal with. After I read those 10 times, I began looking through all current projects they are working on to get a feel for what's going on and how things work. That was day 1 and quickly ran out of written material so I jumped on the internet to hunt down some PLC knowledge; among my travels I found this place. I read the 'Learn PLCs' section on this site as well as on another site that was, however, mainly directed towards SLC 500 (something like that) PLCs. I then found PSIM and downloaded it off the programmer's website. I did all the tutorials and exercises … then redid them again to see if I could optimize my code even more; so that's where I am now. I feel that my knowledge of the basics of logic design and operation are decent … though I do know I need a lot of practice. I don’t want to seem like I think I am the king of all that is electrical, but I am pretty good with programming in basically every language I have had to learn. I learn quickly and don’t typically forget what I have learned even if I have only seen it once. I want to be a go-getter in this job because it’s my first real-world employment and it’s intriguing and kind of cool (to me anyways) … especially for a first job.
My main question is: What should I do next? If I wait for my employers to come up with solutions I believe it will take MUCH longer to progress than I am capable of. The only tools I currently have are the laptop they bought me and my desk (it’s quite sturdy I might add). If I suggest ANYTHING, they will get it for me but I don’t want to be asking them for $10,000 worth of stuff that I don’t need (just yet anyways). Are there any books that are relatively cheap (say, under $200 CAD) that would be an asset to a budding EE controls guy? Are classes actually worth the thousands of dollars they charge?
Whatever I suggest to my employers, they will basically do. They are already asking me how much I am learning and they haven’t even done anything FOR me yet (other than, of course, pay me to read stuff). They say that I will be working with the current controls guys (the contracted ones) but I highly doubt they will be too anxious to help me when I have questions. They also want me to start programming their next machine when it comes up so I want to be ahead so it doesn’t take me 1 month to learn how to upload a freakin program.
So, any help would be GREATLY appreciated and everything you say will be considered. Hopefully Monday I will have a list of **** that I need and I can start getting myself organized. Thank You preemptively for everything … I need help J
My name is Ettore (‘E’ for short) and I am a newbie EE straight out of University. I was recently hired by a small engineering/CAD firm who are in process of expanding into a full-fledged manufacturing/engineering facility in the next, say, year or so. Part of this expansion plan was to take their biggest money pit -paying outsourced controls guys for their controls stuff- and hire a new guy (me) to do it instead.
Well, this is a GREAT opportunity for me because I am now the only EE guy here and, thus, top of the food chain in that respect. However, it isn't good because my employers do not appear to have an exact plan of how to get from here (newbie EE guy) to there (Controls/Pneumatics guru) in the 6 months that they have allotted. This is where (I am hoping) this forum and it’s plethora of expertise comes in.
The types of jobs that we generally deal with are relatively simple in nature. Lots of proximities, cylinders, etc in relatively small scale ($1,000,000 project would be HUGE for us). Most of our machines are designed to replace one person to maybe a few simple jobs but typically involve at least one robot (usually Fanuc or ABB). For example, we are currently designing a system that loads crates of spark plugs which are then staged onto a rotating pallet by our new robot. A second robot (existing) then picks them up from the staged area and installs them into an engine. If it matters, I have no idea what type of PLCs we typically use; nor do any of the people that work here. I saw one CAD drawing with a GE VersaMax and I know that one of our customers (at least) is A-B only.
Where am I now? Well, when I got here they had nothing for me to do so I started reading CAD/manufacturing standards for all the companies that we deal with. After I read those 10 times, I began looking through all current projects they are working on to get a feel for what's going on and how things work. That was day 1 and quickly ran out of written material so I jumped on the internet to hunt down some PLC knowledge; among my travels I found this place. I read the 'Learn PLCs' section on this site as well as on another site that was, however, mainly directed towards SLC 500 (something like that) PLCs. I then found PSIM and downloaded it off the programmer's website. I did all the tutorials and exercises … then redid them again to see if I could optimize my code even more; so that's where I am now. I feel that my knowledge of the basics of logic design and operation are decent … though I do know I need a lot of practice. I don’t want to seem like I think I am the king of all that is electrical, but I am pretty good with programming in basically every language I have had to learn. I learn quickly and don’t typically forget what I have learned even if I have only seen it once. I want to be a go-getter in this job because it’s my first real-world employment and it’s intriguing and kind of cool (to me anyways) … especially for a first job.
My main question is: What should I do next? If I wait for my employers to come up with solutions I believe it will take MUCH longer to progress than I am capable of. The only tools I currently have are the laptop they bought me and my desk (it’s quite sturdy I might add). If I suggest ANYTHING, they will get it for me but I don’t want to be asking them for $10,000 worth of stuff that I don’t need (just yet anyways). Are there any books that are relatively cheap (say, under $200 CAD) that would be an asset to a budding EE controls guy? Are classes actually worth the thousands of dollars they charge?
Whatever I suggest to my employers, they will basically do. They are already asking me how much I am learning and they haven’t even done anything FOR me yet (other than, of course, pay me to read stuff). They say that I will be working with the current controls guys (the contracted ones) but I highly doubt they will be too anxious to help me when I have questions. They also want me to start programming their next machine when it comes up so I want to be ahead so it doesn’t take me 1 month to learn how to upload a freakin program.
So, any help would be GREATLY appreciated and everything you say will be considered. Hopefully Monday I will have a list of **** that I need and I can start getting myself organized. Thank You preemptively for everything … I need help J