Get Started
Read this First…
Considering the gravity of investing your most valuable resource, your time, the following information needs to be absorbed before you start; otherwise, you may waste a lot of your time and money…This page is designed with all learners in mind, at home or in the classroom.
If you already know exactly what you want, go back to the home page and find the manuals needed to learn the platform of your choice. You will also find links to the free videos that support that learning path. Read to the bottom of the page. Otherwise…continue…
Where to start…
Programmable Logic Controller Wisdom
PLC knowledge, experience, and judgement leads to PLC understanding. A PLC is a tireless worker who is easily trained to execute your instructions continuously without making any mistakes…other than the mistakes in your instructions.
PLC Common Knowledge
You begin by learning the personality of your PLC. Regardless of the brand and model of your PLC, they all have a single common design.
What provides the PLC with a perception of the process that it is going to react to?
How does the PLC watch the process or machine?
What provides the PLC with the ability to control the process?
How does a PLC force the process to comply with your instructions?
What provides the PLC with the ability to physically interface with the process?
How does a PLC connect to the field devices?
What set of symbols does a PLC comprehend?
What language does the PLC require your instructions to be presented in?
What does the PLC do with what is “sees’, how are the images from its sensing processed?
How is the information acquired and how is it processed?
What can you do to gain an intimate experiential knowledge of your PLC?
How can you interface with the PLC to build an understanding of its character?
PLC Experience
Now that you have a solid context of what a PLC’s purpose is and how it listens to you and how it does what you want it to do…Then how do you go about putting everything that you need on the work surface in front of you. The problem that you are facing is what to spend your time and money on. The more time that you spend contemplating the problem, the clearer the solution becomes…don’t purchase the first thing that appeals to you. Think through the entire solution before you spend any money.
To acquire PLC experience, you have to “experience” a real PLC, not a virtual PLC. The difference is analogous to reading about a foreign country, watching videos about that country but not visiting that country…you have knowledge but no experience.
Select a PLC…
This event is not like picking a friend or a mate. It cannot be based on appeal but must be a practical choice.
If your goal is professional, these are the criteria:
- Career opportunities: the job opportunities in your geographic area of interest are determined by the installed base of controllers, specifically which brand. Per Google search engine for late 2026:
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- North America / United States: Allen-Bradley holds an estimated 50% to 56% (and up to roughly 60% in broader discrete-automation segments) of the installed PLC and PAC base by unit count, making it the clear regional leader.
- North American Installed Base: Rockwell Automation commands a dominant position in North America, with estimates generally placing its installed base and market share between 40% and 60% (and up to roughly 70% in specific U.S. domestic manufacturing and reshoring sectors). Regional estimates commonly cite around 52% to 56% across general industrial installations in the region.
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- Initial cost to get started: Free is an unreasonable expectation in the long term but viable on the front end. While there are no free PLCs, there are free emulators and simulators. Emulators and simulators are sufficient to give you rudimentary exposure, but in the long run, they do not promote strong permanent memories of an experience and will fail you in the field. Start with free and as you gain strength of interest and commitment, consider purchasing a used PLC from an eBay listing. The programming software, the program development platform is more important than the actual PLC. “The software interface is the PLC to those of us who program it and support its functions”. The physical PLC is a plastic/metal housing with screw terminals and a half dozen LED indicators. These software packages are the lens through which you will observe and characterize the PLC. You can compare them to the resolution of a recorded video, the higher the resolution, the sharper (clearer) the mental image. The availability of tutorials and a PLC Programming Training Course for the PLC that you pick. Documentation from the manufacturer of the PLC, while helpful, falls short as a learning tool…unless you are already an accomplished PLC programmer and can relate the specifications in the manuals with a PLC that you are already intimate with. There are free versions of software that are excellent learning tools, but they are limited to obsolete PLCs that are more expensive to acquire or to PLCs that are not a significant percentage of the installed base.
Select Software
Once you have settled on a PLC (controller) to learn programming with, the software choices narrow to just a few choices. Money is usually the citeria.
What is the least expensive combination of a PLC (controller) and programming software to use for your PLC Programming Training Course?
An Introduction to Ladder Logic Diagrams
Sticking with free software and a free emulator or using a real PLC with inexpensive software
Adding lab project manuals to enhance your learning experience
Select a PLC Programming Training Course of Action
PLC Programming Training Course–Which one?
Your guide to discovering the personality of a PLC is a PLC Programming Training Course…
Any PLC Programming Training Course must…
- Begin with the individual’s current context, that is your existing knowledge on the subject.
- Provide step-by-step instruction, assuming no previous experience, thus allowing you to start anywhere in the learning path.
- Guide the individual through a complete learning path to success.
To maximize the results of a PLC Programming Training Course it needs…
- To engage maximum sensory engagement using hands-on equipment and software.
- To focus on the practical application of knowledge and not just theoretical.
- To have a consistent structure and sequence of interaction with the individual. Authored by one subject matter expert thereby maintaining a single mode of expression, one writing style that you can adjust to and not encounter multiple writing styles on a single subject.
- To support the written material with instructor contact in person, at a minimum comprehensive recorded lectures specific to the course content.
- To use courseware that has been continuously improved by interaction with 1000’s of users.
The availability of the PLC Programming Training Course needs to be high…
- By providing a point of entry into the learning path that is low risk
- Low risk to the individual’s budget.
- Low risk to the individuals current time management.
- Low risk to the overall investment in the job market.
- By requiring the lowest financial investment in hardware and software
- Building hands-on experience, creating lab projects around readily available controllers.
- Using hardware that is supported by a software development platform that, if not free, is very inexpensive and has an extensive user base and field population.
For more than 20 years, we have been providing the lowest learning cost without compromising the learning goal. Finding the least expensive hands-on hardware/software platform and developing a complete PLC Programming Training Course around this equipment and the software that supports it.
Our Desire is to give you easy access to the best learning content available about Industrial Automation, some free and some not, but enough variety to give you a choice.
Our Mission is to provide everyone with the opportunity to a practical and job market ready education on Programmable Logic Controllers! In addition to the manuals used in the PLC Programming Training Course, we provide classroom lectures and lab project wrap-up lectures that have always been free on YouTube. We offer on-site training customized for the individual company, geared to their unique processes.
Hands-ON…Hands-ON…Hands-ON, and more Hands-ON!!! Why do we put such emphasis on “Hands-ON”?
After two weeks…We remember:
10% of what we read…
20% of what we heard (more with field experienced teachers)…
30% of what we saw (more with quality presentations)…
50% of what we saw and heard (more with live demonstrations)…
70% of what we discussed (more with class participation)…
90% of what we DID (Hands-On…Hands-On…Hands-On)!!!
For this reason, a PLC Programing Training Course must be 100% hands-on.
Veteran owned enterprise. In addition to providing a PLC Programming Training Course, we provide person to person/group tutoring and programming services (blank sheet through commissioning) for controllers and HMIs.