Variety of jobs in automation

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Thread Starter

MC

Hello,

As a relatively newcomer to the automation field, I still feel like there is a lot I do not know. But I have come across a few people that don't know certain things I would consider basic knowledge. I met someone working as a controls engineer for two years at a large energy company that didn't know what profibus was. The guy was smart and 60+ so I figured at some point in his career he would have crossed this. So my question is, what kind of controls related work would he be doing for two years where the word profibus never popped up? I would have asked him myself, but I did not want to come off as insulting.

Thanks,
MC
 
Plenty of facilities don't have any Siemens hardware at all. The engineers would, therefore, never have dealt with Profibus.
 
What's profibus? another communication protocol.

I have now come to the understanding, that most power plant control engineers, are not integrally involved in (system integration) commissioning.

All that matters is, does it work?,why not..spare available? call OEM.

So, that's why, and most important; DO NOT TOUCH!!
 
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Bruce Durdle

Profibus is a very minor technique in a very large field - I am also 66+ and have never come across a Profibus installation. OTOH, I have worked on magnetic amplifiers, selsyns, analogue computers, ...
In 40 years, your younger colleagues are likely to be sending whatever the equivalent of e-mails is to forums commenting on the old dude they have to work with who keeps rabbitting on about this antiquated Proffi thing but knows nothing about the latest technology from Alpha Centauri.
 
Unless you are a person who does a wide verity of installations and not operations, you may not run into Profibus. It seams to be the least used of the type behind Canbus, DeviceNet, and Modbus. It is more finicky and requires a special solid type cable with a certain copper content for long runs.
 
W
Just a minor correction, Bruce, before the Profi boys come looking for you. Profibus is the third most used fieldbus, after Modbus and HART with well over 20 million installed nodes. It isn't that widely used in the US, but is ubiquitous elsewhere.

Walt
 
S
Actually, Profibus is LESS finicky than DeviceNet, even with vastly superior performance specs. And while it does require special cable, DeviceNet requires much more expensive (and nasty to work with) special cable, and that dorky, enormous, dedicated power supply.

I agree with your main point, however, which is that Profibus isn't that common in the US, so a lack of familiarity with it isn't a surprising hole in a controls guy's experience.
 
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Luca Gallina

the statement "it seems to be the least used of the type behind Canbus, DeviceNet, and Modbus" may be related to your field of applications and localisation.

While for some the world begins east with Atlantic coast and ends west with the Pacific coast, for many others it's just the opposite. Fieldbusses rank included ;-)

On the tech side, Modbus is not a fieldbus.
 
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Bob Peterson

> On the tech side, Modbus is not a fieldbus.

No, but it is not unheard of for it to be used as a fairly slow but dependable one.
 
Begging your pardon, but I define a fieldbus as a digital connection from a field dev ice to a control network of some kind, and Modbus is certainly that. So is HART.

Walt Boyes, FInstMC, Chartered Measurement and Control Technologist
Life Fellow, International Society of Automation
Editor in Chief, Control and ControlGlobal.com
[email protected]
 
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