Electrical, sensors and PLC

From electrical basics, electrical safety, relays and contactors to reading schematics, PLCs, inverters, servos, HMIs and industrial networks — the 80-part Automation series.

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  1. Learn Automation with MINATA #01: Voltage, Current and Resistance — Understand Before You Touch the Circuit — Understand voltage, current, resistance and Ohm's law through real 24 VDC power, sensor, PLC input and solenoid situations in automated machines.
  2. Learn Automation with MINATA #05: Protective Earthing — A Fault Current Must Have a Safe Path — Tell system earthing, the PE protective conductor and equipotential bonding apart, and understand why a metal panel must have a continuous fault path.
  3. Learn Automation with MINATA #08: Energy Isolation: Seven Lockout and Tagout Steps Before Machine Repair — MINATA guide to lockout and tagout: real conditions, safe procedure, failure evidence, recovery, training, and maintenance checks for dependable automation
  4. Learn Automation with MINATA #10: Normally-Open and Normally-Closed Contacts (NO/NC) — The Foundation of Every Safety Circuit — NO and NC contacts, read by their rest state, are the foundation of fail-safe design: why Start is NO and Stop/E-stop are NC, how to read symbols, and how to bring NC si…
  5. Learn Automation with MINATA #21: The Latching Circuit — The Foundation of Every Control Circuit — The self-holding (seal-in) circuit turns a momentary button into a held command. Wiring NO Start, NC Stop and a holding auxiliary contact, stop priority, and the PLC equ…
  6. Learn Automation with MINATA #26: Reading a Control Diagram Left to Right — How to read a control circuit diagram: power rails, rungs left to right, contact names matching coils, the resting state, and cross-references for fast troubleshooting.
  7. Learn Automation with MINATA #32: PLC Basics and the Scan Cycle — Why the Logic Does Not Run Continuously — A PLC reads inputs, runs the program and updates outputs in a loop. Understanding that cycle is what makes logic predictable and explains faults that look like a slow PL…
  8. Learn Automation with MINATA #33: PLC Inputs, PNP and NPN — Read the Polarity Before You Wire — Two three-wire sensors can look identical and still be wired wrong. What PNP and NPN really change, how to check the module COM first, and where two-wire leakage bites.
  9. Learn Automation with MINATA #35: PLC Timers and Counters — Turning One Signal into a Controlled Sequence — What makes a timer or a counter useful is not the delay or the count but the state and the reset condition around it — including how the scan cycle limits both.
  10. Learn Automation with MINATA #45: Machine Safety and the Emergency Stop — Not One Red Button — An emergency stop is one part of a risk-reduction system. Position, stop category, reset and circuit architecture all come from the risk assessment of that machine.

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Electrical, Sensors and PLC — Automation Learning Path | MINATA