Learning PLCs with Structured Text - EP1 - Intro to IEC 61131-3

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In this episode, I discuss what IEC 61131-3 programming is and why you need to know that it exists. I also show examples of the types of code that fall within the standard, and briefly explain why I don't like most of them with the exception of structured text.

[@levimays55]

"I'm sure there's good reasons to use this, but I've yet to find one." is definitely going in my bank of passive-aggressive things to say.

[@mapleXtree]

You are a hero! This is the only useful ST lesson I can find on the internet. I learned very basic Ladder Logic in tech school and got a job as a controls tech. My employer mainly uses ST in B&R Automation and I have to teach myself everything. Finding your videos was a lifesaver! My only complaint is it was a little hard to follow along at first because I know so little about it in general. Maybe start a video course like PLC programming for Dummies lol

[@stephenholland3081]

Just wanted to say a sincere thanks Evan for you series. It is a brilliant resource. It's extremely generous of you to have taken the time to make this series. Got me up and running in an evening, and I can't thank you enough.

[@SquishyBrained]

You are welcome. This video series only took a few nights to put together, and it has done really well. I actually laned some freelance jobs from it that led to me quitting my day job and starting a consulting company. I'm happy to open up this interesting world of PLC programming to folks trying to get into it. For some reason, the internet is not very rich with information on it. Good luck in whatever your project is, have a good one.

[@hardikd]

@@SquishyBrained what is name of the company

[@SquishyBrained]

@@hardikd the company was Jensen Mechatronics, but I've closed that down since and I work full time at a large scale 3d printing construction company.

[@moumie3246]

Thank you for freely sharing this valuable knowledge on ST. It is the best tutorial so far I get online.

[@SquishyBrained]

Moumie Soulemane Thank you for the positive feedback! Good luck on your projects.

[@LytningBlue]

+SquishyBrained Sir, May i have your email address please?

[@SquishyBrained]

+Swift MiX I sent it in a PM.

[@j-8411]

Hello SquishyBrained! I'd like to congratulate you for this channel and thank you for your time, I didn't realize about the effort until I started sharing some knowledge myself! Great job!

[@SquishyBrained]

J - thanks!

[@BilalAman-od4rs]

the way you are explaining technical terms is quite clear. Keep up the good work.

[@steffhimes]

Awesome. It's so hard to find material on structured text, since it seems there's only a few players out there using it, even though it's 61131-3 Thanks.

[@evanjensen5023]

Thanks. I agree, which is why I made the series... There is just not a lot of info out there and it is the obvious choice for most new people. I've programmed in all of 61131-3 (except IL I guess), and ST is the winner by far for lots of reasons, the most important is that is looks/acts like C, C++, Java, etc that everyone is used to.

[@1973jdmc]

Thank you so much- If you were a Super hero, you’d be MR FANTASTIC- cheers for these brilliant videos

[@mcsmitheslc]

Thanks for doing this. It helped me write a program today without too much trouble.

[@SquishyBrained]

Cool, glad you liked it!

[@Olavotemrazaodenovo]

Excelente.. Congratullations from Brazil.

[@Olavotemrazaodenovo]

congratulations from Brazil.

[@timtran7367]

Good overview IEC 61131-E

[@markkik4803]

Hi Evan, Thanks a lot for your time spend to make the two tutorials of Beckhoff PLC and Motion, It helped me a lot and hopefully you can make a couple of more.

[@lovelycat1991]

Thanks, very good material of twincat 3.

[@Inquire98]

"Thank You", thank you very much...

[@pecomisc2797]

Very well structured class

[@iitanand757]

Very nice and informative overview, can i request u to make one for Matlab/Simulink integration with Twin Cat please.

[@erdemerdem4909]

Thank you for education.İt's very import for me. I did not get this education,I had little money.

[@ratnaweera]

Evan, I am a huge fan of your work. Didactically perfect, technically sound and amazingly funny at times. Is there a way to send you a token donation? Through Patreon or Github or Paypal or the like?

[@SquishyBrained]

Not expected but I think my KZbin chan page allows tips. Or PayPal evanmj a t gmail and I'll put it in my kids college fund :)

[@hijojoy]

Hi, I am new to TwinCat 3 and to PLC programming. I made a program on TwinCat 3 to experiment a little bit. When I switched to Run Mode TwinCat gave me the following error: Error 1:40:05 PM 074 ms | 'TwinCAT System' (10000): Sending ams command >> Init4\RTime: Start Interrupt: Ticker started >> AdsWarning: 4115 (0x1013, RTIME: system clock setup fails. Hint: On Windows8 system execute win8settick.bat in TwinCAT\3.1\System as administrator and reboot.)

[@Jaycephus01]

I had the same issue on 8.1, along with other issues. Ideally, upgrade to Win10. Did you do a "run as administrator" on the "win8settick.bat" batch file?

[@otisshanesharp6830]

Evan, Thank you very very much!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your the man

[@SquishyBrained]

+otis shane sharp No problem :)

[@mrahman252003]

Excellent video tutorial! As a developer using high level programming language such as C/C++/C#/Java etc, I have a question, you can do exactly same thing using these high level programming languages (including timer, state machine etc). So why has Beckhoff (or CodeSys) introduced this new language?

[@SquishyBrained]

+Mahbub Rahman The language (to my knowledge) was not introduced by Beckhoff or Codesys, but was landed on by a consortium of PLC vendors long ago (I don't recall the year or the vendors)... Anyhow, they aimed to standardize the code across vendors so support and training and such were easier in a factory. If you know IEC61131-3, you essentially know how to work with 100s of PLC types. As for why they didn't use an already established language, I think there are a few reasons... They wanted it to be easier to program than C++, etc. ST is very close to C/C++ in functionality, however the other languages that make up IEC61131-3 are "easier" and more suited to engineers and programmers coming from ladder and relay logic. ST is often considered more advanced and complicated than the other IEC languages, but really it is only as capable as the others, as they all get compiled down to instruction lists. That is my second guess as to why.... they already had a compiled language that worked well on current hardware, so they started there and built languages on top of it. There is probably a way to take c++ and have it compile down to instruction list code. These days Beckhoff supports C++ for some things natively on the real time hardware, which is pretty cool if you need it. In practice we have yet to find a problem that ST can't easily solve in the realm of industrial automation. Remember, many of the fancy features of C++ and higher level languages are based around dynamic instantiation of memory, which is just recently available with the object oriented extensions to IEC61131-3, and to my knowledge is very rarely used in automation at this point (though that is changing).

[@mrahman252003]

+SquishyBrained thank you for the explanation. Structured Text looks PASCAL type language (not really used much as high level language). Anyway, Structured Text looks quite easy to learn. Thank you for great tutorial.

[@SquishyBrained]

+Mahbub Rahman Sure, no problem. ST is easy, but more importantly it is the best we have :P. Reading and writing ladder code (In my opinion which is not universally shared) is tedious and mouse-intensive. My rough guess is that 90% of PLC programming is ladder these days, but I'd like to think ST is growing. The company I'm at is 100% ST when the customer allows it.

[@ziborgbe]

@@SquishyBrained no

[@SquishyBrained]

@@ziborgbe huh?

[@dfox8713]

Thanks for this.

[@SquishyBrained]

You got it!

[@akshaypatel0709]

Awesome Job

[@roberto0302rh]

Do you have any other videos on this subject? I'm just starting to get into beckhoff at work . This has been a great help .

[@SquishyBrained]

did you watch the whole series? it's 10 or 12 episodes

[@roberto0302rh]

I'm on #9 right now I started to watch last night. do you do programing for a living ? I just started a new job and all the use is beckhoff . we are having an issue with a program that we had an outside person make for our machine but some how it not correct . this is helping me understand a bit .

[@SquishyBrained]

+Roberto Hernandez I work at a company as a controls engineer. We do industrial automation, and probably 90% of our machines use Beckhoff TwinCAT to some degree. I program robots and other things as well.... VB, Python, etc. I'm not sure how so many companies can get by using outsourced programming on industrial machines. If the machine is even slightly complicated, the programmer typically needs a good bit of time for tweaking the nuances of timing and control to make a functional system.

[@roberto0302rh]

+SquishyBrained you should e-mail me maybe you could help us out . He have been looking for someone that knows programming . I'm a service tech at a machine manufacturing company .

[@SquishyBrained]

+Roberto Hernandez [e-mail]

[@abaloskabenadam6574]

Hi it was interesting all what you said I just wanna ask you if you can to describe twincat please

[@SquishyBrained]

I did that in detail in the first episode of the series

[@박재현-p4w]

Thanks for kind lecture for TwinCAT beginners.. I want to ask you something. Do you know how to control the 1-axis motor by using TwinCAT 3.1? I want to move 1-axis motor by using this program, error is constantly orccuring.. I don't know how to solve this problem...

[@SquishyBrained]

What type of motor? Servo or Stepper, you can use the NC system or talk to the drive directly. DC motor is easier. Elaborate...

[@박재현-p4w]

This is a servo motor, EL-7201 MODEL.. I already succeed moving that motor by using NC-online system, but I want to move this by using structured text... If you have enough time, Can you see my twincat file? If you permit, I'll send this file to your e-mail.. error 16933, 0x4225 is constantly occuring...

[@박재현-p4w]

oh haha I solved the problem!! Thanks for giving your e-mail!

[@secshift]

I learned the more i know the more I am Broke! I spent too much money that i m interested in. If you rich than there is no problem but a poor guy like me go noway.

[@jiaoyao4163]

Thanks!! As a chinese ,it's a little hard to listen,but i try to learn those.

[@SquishyBrained]

+jiao yao Welcome! Good luck with the series. You can turn on closed captions if you are better at reading the language than listening.

[@MonteStudios]

Thanks

[@horan86]

Love it! Thx!

[@macmos1]

Thank you.

[@nothing1321]

can you also make tutorial for twincat2? thanks

[@SquishyBrained]

All the code in this series will drop right into tc2, it is the same language. the visualizations won't copy/paste but otherwise the code will run just the same.

[@nothing1321]

+SquishyBrained if only i can post picture here is much more easy. i got cx1020 beckhoff but i cant connect using my windows 7 laptop.

[@quteibaalsalaa6346]

More Pleas

[@salahboujarra2248]

Thx!