Sequential Control Laboratory for Manufacturing Engineering Education

Today's manufacturing engineer needs to understand the basics of sequential controls as well as the details of interfacing controllers with production equipment in an automated manufacturing environment. A laboratory to address these needs has been implemented in the School of Engineeing at North Carolina A&T State University and is the subject of this paper. This laboratory employs a widely-used line of Programmable Logic Controllers to control robust table-top devices arranged to simulate a simple automated manufacturng environment.