IEC 61131: The Evolution of Controls from Relay Logic to IEC Programming

[@jamescatlett9596]

As a industrial tech morphed into something else, I've been a big supporter and user of IEC61131 for about 7 years. Glad to see AD moving this direction as well as supporting all existing platforms. Whether good or bad, Standardzation is the future!

[@locotumbler]

This video was very clear in explaining all the building blocks. I was a mechanical guy who morphed into automation and cleared up a bunch of aspects for me. Thank you.

[@mattspersic703]

Thanks Doug for the great history lesson. Amazing how much got done with relay logic ... a bit like paper tape and punched cards are to USB memory sticks (our first program in EE written on paper tape and then punched cards). Used a lot of IL on the Pilz hardware. Great that you included a real life drum sequencer! Keep making fun and historical videos.

[@seminolefantodd4736]

Thanks Doug! I programmed my first PLC in 1985. It was a Joucomatic PLC (the pneumatics vendor that sold it called it a "Joke-A-Minute") and it had an on-board keypad and programmed in boolean; I was miserable! (I still own it though and have it displayed in my garage, LOL!) My next was the Cutler-Hammer D100 and I loved it because the handheld displayed ladder. From 1990 to 2012 I was a Allen-Bradley diehard but their pricing and tight fistedness over software chased me away. I have and remain since 2012 a loyal user of Click, BRX and Productivity and choose based on application. The challenge I see is getting end users to DEMAND their factory automation be coded using Codesys to "hopefully" break Rockwell Automation's monopoly on PLCs and their terrible HMIs.

[@jimknowlton342]

It's a sad development, because we're so far from the relay machine fundamentals now with the text based coders coming into the field that we're having to reinvent anti-tie down and concurrency and all of the fundamentals we've had for decades with these kids, and they are basically working on Fiver and are here and gone so fast that it doesn't make sense to really train them. We're going to have a lot of injured operators and machines that aren't nearly as flexible as ops managers want them to be in our future.

[@automationdirect]

@jimknowlton342, we completely agree. The Text based editor has a very very easy to use diagnostic window that comes up. It shows you what is going on so that will help the electrician's and such diagnose it. It is shown in every Doug Bell video for ST for this reason. Very much like STATUS - MONITOR in your other PLC lines. Prior TEXT based editors did not have that.

[@jimknowlton342]

@@automationdirect you have some of the best kit in the industry, a lot of us using AB secretly wish AD stuff was more common.