| The PLC/Pneumatics lab exercise |
| This is a lab demo that I was asked to build in order to demonstrate to the students the operating principles of PLC's and pneumatics. This page has just been built recently and is only in it's rough form currently. I will revise and polish this up soon. |
| Pictured above is a view of our pneumatic cylinders. These incorporate flow control valves to regulate the speed at which the pistons actuate. The cylinders are an eliptical design to prevent axial rotation. The sensors are solid state magnetic hall effect sensors |
| Above is an overall view of the setup showing all the major components. This includes the pneumatic valve manifold, the pneumatic cylinders, the PLC, the I/O Bus blocks, the sensors, and the switch box. |
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| Above is a picture of the valve manifold. We have a total of eight valves, (only three of which are currently being used.) We have a variety of three and two position valves using one and two coils that are pilot air assisted. This was done to demonstrate to the students the different valve types available for use in different applications. |
| Pictured above is our Direct logic PLC. This is a modular design using various I/O modules that are optically isolated from the CPU. The chasis backplane with power module can come in different sizes to accomodate different numbers of modules including different CPU's. |
| This is our I/O Bus block. The first three segments on the left consist of Input busses. The first is the sensor signal bus, the second is the input power bus (supplies power to both the sensors and manual switches), the third is the sensor common bus. Next are the output busses. The first is the output power bus, next (in green) are the output fuse boxes, and last of all is the output power source which converts 120 volts AC to 24 volts DC to power the valve coils. The Inputs power source is run off of the auxilary power terminals on the power module of the PLC. |
| Pictured here are the manual input switches. I have a green cycle start switch, a red stop at end of cycle switch, and a black power on/off switch. |
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