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Originally posted by ANONYMOUSE:
I did a PLC course years ago, and loved it.

There was one point where we had to write a program to control a miniature conveyor belt. The task was to operate the belt, which was carrying three items, and control relays to represent heaters and paint sprays. Sequence: belt moves until item breaks a detector beam. Heater relay triggered for 10 secs. Belt moves on until item breaks a second beam. Paint spray relay triggered for 15 secs. Belt moves backwards back to heater for 30 secs, to dry the paint. Belt finally moves on until item drops off into bin. Repeat for second & third items.

All was well with my program...until for some reason the belt didn't stop when the second item reached the heater! Not only that, it worked perfectly for the third item! What the hell?!

It wasn't until I realised the gorram thing was smaller than the other two and hence was passing under the beam of the detector that I figured out what to do about it...namely adjust the beam's height slightly. After that the whole thing worked perfectly. As a test, I changed the order of the items, putting the smaller one first and then third on a later run, and it still worked.

Gorram detector beams! :)

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:
It's funny - you seem to spend a lot of time bagging on people who want to be more educated.

And then you congratulate yourself for gaining a little bit of education.

You seem to think education is only useful if it leads directly to monetary gain. Is there no information you think is useful in and of itself? What of beauty for beauty's sake? What of learning for the sake of learning?

And if you think learning is only useful if you use it for a better job, why on earth would you ever have wasted your time watching a show like Firefly? What job could it possibly get you?

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