Shawn Tierney shares information about the new Automation Museum fundraiser, as well as his thoughts on A-B PLC-5s, and why they would make a good exhibit.
For information about donating to the Automation Museum, please click here.
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Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Shawn Tierney here, and I'm announcing a fundraiser for something I've been wanting to do for a long time, the automation museum. And I thought this would be a great place where we could feature the history of industrial automation. And, of course, they'll have other parts too. There'll be other technologies covered to this like computers.
You wanna cover computers as well. But, in any case, for you and I, the biggest thing would be automation, I think. And the whole thought process behind this came when, you know, I'm collecting, all this equipment, do training courses, and I've been doing this for thirty five years. And I some old things are just, you know, sentimental to me and I don't wanna throw them away. And I know there's a lot of you out there who are in the same boat.
A matter of fact, you've sent me some great stuff because we've talked about my desire to open up an automation museum. And so I'm hoping if we can get just 3% of you out there who follow me to, just to give a few dollars, we could actually get the nonprofit organization set up and start accepting really big donations from large corporations. Now that's not to say I don't think that all of us, together, you know, the 80,000, controls engineers in The US couldn't do this. We could, but it's a lot easier when you have a five zero one three c and you can get money because a lot of these big companies, they have a edict that they have to give away so much money every year. Right?
They have all these great profits, so they have to give some away. And so we wanna be able to tap into that some too. So, you know, let's think of this future automation museum. Maybe there's a Rockwell wing, and Rockwell sponsors some new displays there or a Siemens wing or a Schneider wing or whoever. Right?
I mentioned those three guys first because they're some of my biggest sponsors. Right? But we could also have a Moxa and a P and F and all the other great vendors who've, met with Toledo who sponsored content here. I should probably name them all, but there's so many of them. Right?
But in any case, I think it'd be very cool to have a place where not only the stuff gets displayed, but you and I can share our knowledge with the rest of the industry. So, you know, when I retire maybe in ten or twenty years, I hope, maybe, you know, who who's gonna like, if somebody has to go work on a PLC five or a SIC 500 or a Micrologix, where are they gonna find that information? Maybe they're gonna work on a PLC two. Maybe they'll work on a PDQ or an s one or s two or some of the really old emoticon 84. Right?
So, how are they gonna get, that information. Right? And how are they gonna learn how to use it and maintain it? And then how are new controls engineers gonna understand where the industry started? Why things are the way they are?
Why 06/1131 came where it came from, and why it was so important to our industry to kinda try to standardize the the technology. Right? And so that's what I thought. I just put this up. Brandon and I both, contributed some money.
I also donated the, the.org and the.com to the to the organization. And what we're looking for is really just the first stage is to get up to $3,000. Right? And if we can get the $3,000, we can get the five zero one three c set up and, we can, start taking bigger, bigger contributions. Right?
And, but in any case, I hope you guys are interested in this. And I wanna now switch over and talk about some of this old technology here. And, I wanna talk about PLC five. So, what a great product this was when it came out. If any of you were around during the transition from two to fives now, I got into 1990.
Right? So the PLC five came out in '86. I think it was gonna supposed to come out in '85, but then Rockwell bought Allen Bradley. That's one of the stories I heard. It was kinda delayed a little bit and came out in '86.
Could be totally totally wrong. But in any case, that's the kind of stuff we could we could archive at the Automation Museum. But, you know, the PLC five was just so much more phenomenal than the PLC two in many ways. And I'm sure there's some PLC two lovers out there saying, but but but but, I just love that, you know, having learned, in college, having learned how to program microprocessors. Right?
Using machine code. And then, you know, having, you know, learned, you know, c, you know, all these different languages, Pascal, basic, as a as a kid, really. You know, when I came to the PLC two and the slick one fifty, it was like or slick 100. It was really difficult because, like, everything was numeric. Like, it had all these numeric tables and yet to remember everything.
And while, you know, I could read the book and understand it was hard given that concept to electricians who would call in for help. And so, when the PLC five came out, one of the huge things they added was letters in front of the the the data table addresses. So t's for timers, b for counters, n for ninja, c, you know, f for floating point, you know, and all these different things. And it just made i's for inputs, o for outputs, and it just so made so things so much better. Plus, the PLC five was the, first PLC that Rockwell made that, there was no handheld program before it.
Now I never heard of one. I never heard of anybody using a t four or t five or t six to program them. I've never found any reference to that in any literature. Maybe you guys know something different. But for as far as I know, these units had to be programmed with a PC.
A lot of electricians didn't have PCs. I remember arguing with my boss in the early nineties that it's just give me a copy of Windows so I could, support, the Wintelligent series from ICOM, great software. But in any case, you know, and and that really moves the industry forward as well because there's so much thing so much more you can do with a PC than you could do with a, you know, an old electronic handheld programmer. And, now if you take a close look here, I'm sure some of you see that one of these PLCs is not a PLC five. That's right.
I stuck in. I don't it must be in the garage, you know, my old studio at home. I don't know where the five, I think it's the five eleven is. But in any case, so I stuck in because it looks so similar, a mini PLC two. I don't know.
Is this a five o is this a two sixteen or two seventeen? Two sixteen. So I used this a lot in the early nineties as well to support the gotta be careful here because they're like dominoes. They can all fall over. But, to support the POC two and, you know, use an AI and, six two hundred.
But in any case, over here, you could see the original four. And, again, these these I've picked these up over the years, for the course I'm teaching on POC fives, which is still on which just is just getting started. But in any case, you can see over here the original PLC fives and then the next generations, I don't have a five eighty. I know you're somebody's probably asking, hey. Do you get a five?
No. I mean, these I had some people some some old colleagues say, oh, they they must be, like, a million dollars each. It's like, no. You can get them for a $100. The problem is the software.
The software, there's no cheap way to get a official license. I wanna thank one of our viewers actually, tree, re how do I wanna put this? He he, gave me he transferred his software to me so I could support it here at the, at the automation school and the automation blog. So, thank you very much. And, we trade I I sent them a micro and some other stuff in in exchange, but, it was great to get that so I could support the, support the the students out there.
But in any case, that's the problem. The the hardware is very inexpensive. I got a piles of seventeen seventy one I o cars I'll go through in the course. They're actually over here in a box that I'll be going through. I even have the sidecar.
The infamous sidecar works so well, but was so expensive and got this continued. It's way too early, I think. But, in any case, I like the sidecar. It's a little, hardware wise, you know, you gotta use up that first slot, but and it's just works so well. But in any case, the PLC fives, this is this is, some knowledge.
Right? And the PLC twos and threes. The this is knowledge that a lot of people, don't have today. And so as people are retiring. Right?
You know, they may say, well, we have to throw it away because it's nobody knows how to use it, but you don't. These things are monsters. They're awesome. They're they're granted, they don't do coordinated motion and servos and all that. But, man, you can do a racks and racks and racks and racks of IO with these things, analog and digital, and they just they they they program in multiple languages unlike, you know, the slick fiber and micrologics.
And it's just some of the history that will be lost and we're already losing, you know, on some of the products that came out in the sixties and seventies and eighties. Right? And and now the nineties. Right? And so this is the type of stuff I would like to have on display and, have that a physical automation museum, which would have to be located somewhere near my office, you know, unless we've raised a lot of money where we could afford someplace, touristy.
You know, maybe next next to one of the big theme packs, theme parks or something. But in any case, I do think, a lot of you out there too have some great stuff that you would like to donate. And, I know a lot of people are like, no. No. No.
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