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.