Hello from NY

Where up state, people tell me upstae then are from Middletown, my mother was from upstate Watertown.

Hello from the beautiful Hudson Valley!

Saratoga Springs, I say upstate because if I say i'm from NY, most people assume NYC. Yeah, so anywhere north of NYC is considered upstate. I've even seen people from western NY consider themselves from upstate.

I think the term derives from criminals from NYC getting prison sentances and are "going upstate."

Welcome InControl :thumbsup:

What line of controls are you in? Industrial automation type stuff? I'm an Allen Bradley and Omron guy myself when it comes to that sort of gear.

Yeah, industrial automation MD. If there was one word to describe my job, it would be VARIETY. I work on machines made in the USA, Germany, England, Italy, Switz. So, i've seen many different ways to acclompish the same result.

As far as PLC's, the company I work for is trying to somewhat standardize things by demanding all machinery with PLC's being purchaced have Siemens PLC's in them. Siemens is by far the the worlds dominant force in PLC's, and IMHO the hardest to program.

So, I'm famaliar with Siemens, Allen Bradley, Automation Direct (Koyo, TI), Mitsubishi, Omron, Automax (Rockwell), Eberlee, Nias, and probably a few more that dont come to mind.

And thats just PLC's....the rest of the machinery as as just as diversified!

Cool. My background is mostly as a factory electrician. Got to be diversified and have your head screwed on straight. Every machine, assembly line, and work center was made somplace else in the world. I sorta like the European style prints that read left to right.

Seimens? The last Seimens PLC I ever worked on was pretty much identical to one I formerly worked on with the Texas Instruments label. Did Texas Instruments PLC's become Seimens?

Your right about the older european prints being better, but with the advent of Autocad, modern american prints are almost as good.

Siemens bought out TI. I'm not quite clear about what transpired but I think Koyo and TI had some sort of partnership and Siemens bought TI's part. Koyo disappeared for awhile and then became a part of Automation Direct???? I've heard that if your using Siemens' Microwin, that that software was devoloped by TI. I'm not sure and am only repeating what i've heard through the years.

A little research finds more word of mouth material...

There is a bit of history behind the Microwin software. Origionally, the hardware was designed by the old TI team in the states, but the software was supposed to come from Germany from the same team that was writing Step-7. The software was late.....(the Step-7 project itself was disastrously late). Eventually the hardware team gave up on ever seeing any software, so they quickly cobbled together first the MicroDos, and then the origional MicroWin software as an interim solution. This new software is probably what should have been origionally available (I dont know which team it was written by).

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The TI 300 series was made by Koyo. When Siemens bought TI's PLC division, they sold it for a few years as the Simatic-TI. Koyo now sells these PLC's themselves, including over the internet as Automation Direct. I believe that GE used to sell these PLC's before TI did. So the history was GE, then TI, then Siemens, and now Koyo directly (as Automation Direct). Siemens developed the S7 series as an entirely new product range, with no connection to the products which Koyo sold. The S7-200 series covers the lower end product range which the Koyo PLC's used to fill for TI (and Siemens). The S7-300 is a completely new product which covers the lower to mid range.

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