Industrial Electronics/Systems Resources?

Does anyone here know of a good resource (online, print, otherwise) for an introduction to applications of industrial electronic devices? Current role is of manufacturing engineer, focused primarily on fixturing & gage design, cutting tool selection & CNC programming. I would really like to learn more about current state of the art in industrial electronics, i.e. selection of hardware, PLC programming & integration of simple machines in the industrial setting. I have zero experience with these kind of systems now, and can see new applications in our facility and would certainly like to know more about what some of the electronic devices are on the machine tools. I would like to be able to design some simple systems that have some automation, look in the electronic cabinet of the machine and have SOME understanding of what I'm looking at, and an understanding of external function integration to our machine tools. I did some searching on the topics, but it seems so that here are not many introductory materials available. Anybody have a good starting point? TIA.

The vocational school here in Erie county offers/offered "Industrial electronics" and
I think it covers what your looking for.

https://ia800307.us.archive.org/6/i...cs/Fundamentals_of_Industrial_Electronics.pdf

I have a few books published by CRC Press. No complaints. You can download this book for free. In a technical book store it would cost $$.

Home | BEI Sensors - Rotary Encoder Products for Motion Control

Look at their wireless encoders. A lot of other products too.

http://197.14.51.10:81/pmb/ELECTRON...ble Logic Controllers Programming Methods.pdf

There are some modern PLC's these days with programming accomplished via a built-in LCD screen.

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rons said:

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And to control design which might have more of what you are after.
I like the printed versions of both better than the on-line. Let's me browse the info and ads easier.
Somewhere, at some point you will need to take a class on-line or in person about PLC programming and interfacing or find a good mentor.
Start with the baby steps, get a good understanding of electrics and electronics. Pursing this path will be good for your career.
Few manufacturing or process engineers understand controls so they don't know if they are getting good or bad info fed to them and simply can not evaluate a vendor as it is all Greek buzzword stuff.

Once you get this side you can have your cnc and robots query your cell phone, have your toast and coffee pop up warm and ready as you walk in the door in the morning.
Check parts, make size adjustments, track quality, schedule tooling and fixtures for upcoming jobs, monitor employees,... the list is endless.
Can you find a mentor to latch onto or just call once in a while and shoot the shit with?
Bob

Thanks for the above responses. I do have a tech college local to me. They list a workforce education course for PLC programming. They don't have any courses scheduled at the moment, I did reach out to them to see if they have any planned that are not listed. I also subscribed to the print versions of machine design & control design. There isn't anybody at our facility that does this kind of thing; most of my interest in this comes from anything that we have onsite that breaks usually requires a call to the machine supplier and they send a tech to work on it. Seems that 9/10 times the tech doesn't know the machine implicitly, but knows more about the function of the components and how to read the outputs and make a diagnosis/repair from that. This is mostly an exploration to something that I don't know much about, just looking to learn something new. Thanks again for the responses.