Cesar Pena

04/20/2010

0 Comments

One of our many areas of expertise at DMC is developing and integrating machine vision systems. Our focus is on offering the most effective solution for the application; we are hardware/vendor independent and are not tied to any platform. When select...

Nick Shea

04/01/2010

13 Comments

Siemens and Rockwell Automation are two giants competing in industrial automation technology today. Rockwell (aka Allen-Bradley) seems to be more popular in the US market, but Siemens has a larger international customer base. A cursory Google search ...

Kristie Simon Shea

04/01/2010

0 Comments

In many industries, shaftless drive technology has replaced the old mechanical drive systems. Instead of using mechanical gearing to force one axis on a machine to follow another one, servos are used. The servo technology reduces many of the flaws of...

Jon Carson

03/15/2010

2 Comments

Since their conception PLC programs have been founded on simple programs. RLL (Relay Ladder Logic) and IL (Instruction List) commands have dominated PLC programs since PLCs first came to market in the 1970s. However in the past few years automation r...

Nick Shea

03/10/2010

3 Comments

When commissioning or troubleshooting PLC inputs and outputs (IO), the analog signals are often the most difficult. First, analog IO almost always has to be scaled to convert the raw signal to useful process values. Also, there are many wiring and ex...

Matt Puskala

03/05/2010

10 Comments

We are frequently asked to work on PLC systems for clients that we did not develop. The job could be troubleshooting an issue or adding a new feature to the system. Working with unfamiliar code has its own unique challenges, although we take pride in...

Nick Shea

03/04/2010

0 Comments

For those of us who appreciate and harness the power of indirect addressing in Siemens S7 300 and 400 level PLCs, we were sad to hear that this functionality was not supported in the same way for the new Step 7 Basic software for S7-1200 PLCs. As ...

Nick Shea

02/26/2010

5 Comments

Many consumers, including myself, have tapped into the ever-growing functionality of mobile internet. Many people leverage this infrastructure for their mobile phone. Others are beginning to use WiMAX connections for their PCs. Not to be out-done, PL...

Cesar Pena

12/17/2009

0 Comments

There are certain control systems, such as in nuclear power plants and airplanes, that cannot be disabled or shut down, even momentarily, because of the threat to people’s lives. In these applications, a redundant control system must be in plac...

Tim Jager

12/08/2009

0 Comments

Encapsulating your data into custom Data Structures will allow you to Dominate (maybe not the world, but at least your PLC) I'm going to conclude my series on the IEC 61131-3 standard by examining the benefits of Data Structures. (If you misse...