How involved should I get with PLC?

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#1

Hey everyone, this is my first day taking the PLC course on Udemy. I can’t help but wonder if its going to be useful for me. I’m an Industrial Robotics Maintenance Tech (Apprentice) and as I’m going through my apprenticeship, I’m trying to set short term and long term goals for myself. My ultimate goal at this company is to get into engineering as a Robot Engineer. A couple of people have suggested that I dip my toes in PLC and learn a bit about it, while some say I need to be extremely good at PLC and I’ll be working with Ladder Logic more than the Robots themselves. I guess I have an idea about what I need to know and do, but I’m really looking for opinions and suggestions and don’t want to share them just yet, so I don’t influence others’ answers.

I suppose what I’m trying to ask is should I devote more time to learning PLC if I’m aiming for Robot Engineer or should I focus more on other things. I’m open to suggestions, constructive criticism, and hearing about everyone’s personal experiences in the field.

Thank you

#2

The reality of the market is that you can build a career in robotics and / or control systems (PLC, HMI, SCADA, etc.). You can become a generalist that knows a bit of everything, or a specialist that knows one or the other extremely well.

For me, it’s good to know what other disciplines do, but it’s extremely difficult to master everything. Therefore, I recommend learning the fundamentals of PLC programming, but if your goal is to focus on robotics, you won’t need to be an expert in PLCs.

I’ll also add that every robot will interact with the rest of the facility - typically through a PLC. It’s a good idea to understand what’s possible as it will allow you to communicate better with those your system interfaces with.

Hope that makes sense…

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