Recent content by Jason Hogan

I would keep the actual safety function out of the standard PLC path. There’s nothing wrong with sending a status from the safety relay into the PLC so the program knows why the drives are inhibited, but I wouldn’t make that PLC input and a normal network command the thing that actually...

A FIFO or queue of part records still sounds like the right approach here, especially since the spacing between parts isn't fixed. I would keep one structure per part and update it as the part reaches each camera instead of relying on a timed bit shift. The key is having a real sensor or...

Hey namdinh541, It’s awesome to see a student proactive enough to look beyond textbook code. School projects usually assume everything works 100% of the time, but real-world industrial automation is mostly about handling what happens when things go wrong. Since The Instrument Guy gave you a...

With 30°C internal cabinet temp and only 20% load, you're in the sweet spot. Thermal stress on the primary and secondary capacitors is minimal here. Under these conditions, reputable industrial supplies (like Puls DIMENSION or Phoenix Quint) easily reach 12 to 15+ years of actual service life...

MTBF is just statistical math, not component wear-out life. In real-world 24/7 DCS panels, top-tier 24VDC supplies usually last 8 to 12 years depending on thermal stress. The main bottleneck is electrolytic capacitor dry-out (Arrhenius rule: lifespan halves for every 10°C temp rise). Most...