We have a new developer starting work on PLCs who's never used function blocks before - are there any good tutorials we can point her towards, preferably online but any good literature that would get her up and running?

 

In twenty years i have never met a female plc programmer, I met only one female electrician, at a Ford car plant. Is there any reason for this other than the usual early gender pressure away from engineering?

 

Check out WAGO- they use IEC-61131 as their programming platform and has free demos etc. Others have too, and check out PLCopen.org - the association that represents IEC-61131 and other programming standards

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Crazy Canuckian!
Integration and Automation Training, Consulting, and Software
http://www.tsuonline.com

 

Try the Siemens website, under their Step 7 software. Even though you may not be using their package, the programming manual has a few really good chapters on how to define a system's functional block areas which will go a long way to getting any "newbie" up to speed.

 

I have the same experience. I know of a grand total of one female PLC programmer, and a few female electricians.

My guess is that its several things. One is that women often are not interested in the trades and few are interested in engineering type jobs. many who do get into engineering jobs do not want to do industrial control work due to the hours involved. That may be part of the reason so few women get into the trades too.

Sometimes you just have to work the hours, no matter what, and women, for whatever the reasons, seem to be less willing to do this.

 

The only reason is that you were looking in the wrong places, I have several female colleagues where I work, and very good engineers too.

Donald Pittendrigh

 

Check out the Honeywell web site. On the right side of the page select the items under "Configuration" for information on function block programming.

http://content.honeywell.com/imc/pi/hybrid/hc900.stm

 

>Sometimes you just have to work the
>hours, no matter what, and women, for
>whatever the reasons, seem to be less
>willing to do this.

I totally disagree with the above statement. I'm an electrician working currently on a coal plant and I absolutely love my job. I qualified through an apprenticeship where there were a lot of old fashioned people telling me I shouldn't be in the job and that i wouldn't succeed. This made me work twice as hard and any female that enters the engineering world is forever working harder and proving to everyone they are good if not better than the men in the same job