Design, Construction, and Evaluation of Portable Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) Kit for Industrial Automation and Control Education

A low-cost portable programmable logic controller (PLC) kit consisting of a controller module and three swappable special function modules - Basic I/O, Sensor, and Automated System - was designed, built, and evaluated. The special function modules can be quickly connected to or disconnected from the controller module to teach different aspects of automation and control, including PLC programming fundamentals, sensor applications in automation, I/O interfacing, and system integration concepts. The kits were used within an upper-level undergraduate manufacturing automation and robotics course to provide students the opportunity to practice programming fundamentals while still in the classroom and for a system integration project in which students built small-scale working models of automated systems. Kits with Basic I/O and Sensor modules were evaluated by 80 students and kits with the Automated System modules were evaluated by 12 students. Evaluation results suggest that the Portable PLC kit is both usable and useful for helping students to practice PLC programming concepts. Students appreciated the opportunity to immediately practice concepts taught during lecture and to visualize results. In addition, students who used Portable PLC to build an automated system found the experience to be helpful for understanding how to interface devices and for integrating the concepts learned in class.