Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks for Control Engineering

Control Engineering asks for in the form below (and plans to post and publish) the best money-saving tips related to controls and automation. Take a tip or leave a tip about control and automation. Don’t miss this opportunity to help and learn from other experts in the industry.

We want practical ideas that aren’t covered in manuals and low-cost effective shortcuts that save time and money without harming safety or long-term productivity. Other sources include process control tips, sensor knowledge, actuator expertise, and programming or machine design tricks of the trade that have been passed around like legend throughout the control engineering department.

Tell us how you’ve saved the company a few dollars (or perhaps a few thousand…), saved your co-workers a few hours, or saved your customers, clients, or partners from a few sleepless nights. These can be stories retold around the engineering water cooler and plant-floor control engineering legends that actually are true.

Control Engineering seeks to encourage the long-standing spirit of sharing engineering information common to all manufacturers. No matter what you make or how you made it, let’s help each other raise the bar on automation and process control productivity, to help each other survive and thrive.

While the form linked below accepts text only, Control Engineering encourages your great ideas in any form – essays, hand-drawn diagrams, or videos. By participating, you’ll be part of the Control Engineering community helping to make manufacturing better and more productive, at a time when every plant and so many applications of the control engineering beyond manufacturing, could benefit from this kind of knowledge.

Read these Tips and Tricks on:

A few rules:

  • Anything submitted becomes property of CFE Media and Control Engineering, so don’t let go of company secrets. We’re looking for practical advice that will help your peers.
  • Be constructive. Please don’t submit slander, libel, or general complaints.
  • Relate the tips to automation and controls in some way – sensors, logic, actuators or the networks, software, interfaces, or systems that tie it altogether. Control Engineering coverage areas also include controllers (PLC, PAC, DCS, industrial PCs, board-level and embedded controllers) human-machine interface, motors, drives, motion control, robotics, instrumentation, SCADA, energy efficiency as it relates to manufacturing—engineering sustainability, system integration, control design tools, and mentoring and training of the next generation of control engineers and those who use all these technologies.
  • Quantify the benefits. Engineers like numbers that prove a point.
  • Explain the details concisely.
  • Photos: Submit before and after photos to help prove your point. Ensure we have unencumbered rights to publish and post. Enter text below; for photos or diagrams, please put Tips and Tricks and the title of your submission in the subject and send to controleng@cfemedia.com. By sending, you have given CFE Media rights to publish and post. Please also submit a text summary below.
  • Tutorial videos: tell a story in a video clip, 5 minutes or less. Ensure we have unencumbered rights to publish and post. Put Tips and Tricks in the subject and send to controleng@cfemedia.com. By sending, you have given CFE Media rights to publish. Please also submit a text summary below.
  • Keep a record of your submission, just in case.
  • Please submit your as soon as possible to be considered for the next North American edition of Control Engineering. (Also see the Plant Engineering Tips & Tricks program.)