Shadowing Practice: Wiring Allen Bradley Compactlogix Sinking Inputs and Sourcing Outputs - Learn English Speaking with Video

- Hi, this is Tim.

Today, we're gonna talk about how to wire an Allen -Bradley CompactLogix PLC, both its inputs and outputs.

And really this video is for an Allen -Bradley CompactLogix PLC, but these principles work with any Allen -Bradley PLC, or well, really any PLC,

or really probably any electrical circuit.

Let's stick with NPLC.

And we're gonna be following our wiring enough to get started exercise using this wire diagram, which I'll put a link to in the description.

I'm also gonna put a link to a video I did on syncing and sourcing inputs.

which is critical for figuring out how to wire, not just an Allen Bradley compact logics PLC, but any PLC really.

And we go through this basic diagram and determine whether our PLC inputs are sourcing or syncing, and that determines how we wire them.

So make sure you watch this video, because this is, this is a very important video.

In the case of our compact logics, its PLC inputs are syncing and its PLC outputs are sourcing. So...

We plug in our PLC input down at syncing.

That means we'll be using sourcing sensors and this tells us how we need to wire it.

In the case of the PLC outputs We plug in that we have a source and PLC output, and that means our lights need to be wired for syncing.

We're going to go through all of it in this video and we're going to go really slow

just to make sure we understand why we're doing what.

And so what we're going to start with is we're going to start with our input.

We have our DC plus power going and it's jumpering to all of these buttons.

and then button one continues on to input zero.

We're just going to concentrate on button one to start with.

So we're going to take 24 volt from our plus DC.

We're going to go to our green contact on our button one, and then we're going to connect it to input zero.

On our buttons here, they all have a green contact and a red contact.

Our green contact is going to be a normally open contact, and our red contact is going to be a normally closed contact.

And it also says right on the green ones were normally open.

NC on the red ones for normally closed.

And on our trainer, it does plug into 110.

We have 110 here, which powers our PowerFlex drive.

It has a 24 volt DC power supply right here.

And that 24 volt DC power supply has landed on these sets of terminals.

So the left set of four terminal blocks here is our plus 24 volt.

And the right set of four terminal blocks is the zero volt or the minus.

our green contact, we'll connect it to plus 24 volts.

And then we're gonna connect a wire from the bottom of our green contact, and we're gonna connect it to input zero.

All right, and a lot of people say, OK, we're done.

We're not, because going back to that syncing and sourcing video, remember, we have to have current flow through our PLC input for it to work.

So right now we've got to wire from the plus of our power supply up to our switch.

Then we go from the other side of our switch.

to our PLC input.

But what we've left out is this little bit of wire here

from the other side of the PLC input back to the minus of our power supply.

And this is the most common thing I see people leave out on their circuits.

They call me and they're like, "Hey, I've wired all this up, and none of my input lights work." Well, they don't have a complete circuit, 'cause they've left out that minus.

And it can be a little bit more confusion, especially in the L18 compact logics, because the common is not with the input.

So we have input zero through seven, and eight through 15 here.

We don't see that common for that part to go back to the minus of our power supply.

And it's over here on the main terminal.

It's the FP plus terminal and FP minus terminal.

You need to connect the minus of our power supply to the FP minus terminal to complete that circuit.

So we're gonna take a wire from the minus of our power supply, and we're gonna connect it to the FP minus terminal.

One thing I'd say, especially as you're starting out, is check your wiring often.

So hook up a few circuits, check and see if it works, hook up a few more, check and see if it works.

Because if you hook up all of this, and let's say you short something out somewhere, it's gonna be a lot more difficult to find the problem.

You're going to get frustrated a lot quicker.

So let's go and power this up and make sure input zero works.

Alright, so we're powered up and we hit button one and sure enough input zero is illuminating.

Also if you're using our trainer and the default getting started programs in it, then output zero is also limiting.

Don't worry about it right now.

We'll talk about it at the end of the video.

So our wiring is right, but before we move on, Let's take this FP minus terminal loose, just so you can understand what I was talking about,

about the circuit not being complete.

So we've taken that wire off.

And now I'm going to press button one.

and we're not getting input zero.

So in this case we have power from the plus of

our 24 volt going to the top of our green contact

and then out of the bottom of our green contact we're going to input zero

but we don't have that last little piece of our circuit.

So if you have a similar situation where you're pressing the button

and you're sure that the power is wired right to it it's gonna be the issue.

So I'm gonna connect the FP minus back before I forget about it.

And now we're gonna wire the rest of our buttons.

And we're gonna start with the power to our buttons.

So we had a power already at button one, and we're gonna jumper that.

across the top.

So each one will need a wire tying them together.

So we'll need a wire from button one to button two, and then button two to button three, then button three to button four,

then button four to to switch one

and then we already have a power wire coming across so that will give us power

on the top of all of our green contacts.

Okay, so that takes care of getting power to the top of all of our buttons.

Now we're gonna connect a wire from the bottom of each green contact to its corresponding inputs.

We've already connected button one to input zero.

Now we're going to take button two to input one, button three to input two, button 4 to input 3 and switch 1 to input 4.

Now notice those are not perfectly in line 1 :1, 2 :2, 3 :3, so don't get those confused.

Okay, looking at our getting started guide, we now have all of our input side wiring done.

So you should have wires going on the top of all the green contacts of buttons one through four and switch one.

And then you should have a wire going from the bottom of each green contact of button one

So you should have five wires connected to the first row of terminal blocks, and we have that field power minus terminal connected.

And let's test it out.

Button one is going to turn on input zero.

And we'd already tested that, but it's good to test it again since we added some more wires.

Button two is going to turn on input one.

Button 3 is going to turn on input 2.

Button 4 is going to turn on input 3.

And switch 1 is going to turn on input 4.

You'll see a sequence going across here once switch 1 is on.

Like I said, just ignore the outputs for now.

If yours is not doing that, take the time just to trace out that wiring and figure out what the problem is.

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Don't move any further.

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And again, the one that I really think you'll probably forget is this FP minus terminal.

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And let's just do an exercise to see how we can figure

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that out because I'll show you how easy it is to think that you have it wired right.

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So I'm gonna just connect the minus of my voltmeter to one of my minus terminals, which would be typically how I really do troubleshoot.

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And then I'm going to set my voltmeter to DC volts.

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See if we can set that in there.

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Bye.

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And we're going to take this FP minus terminal off again.

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Now, when we press our buttons, none of them work.

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But when we go to test here, we have 24 volt at the top of our contact.

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We also have 24 volt when we press our contact.

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And even if we take a wire and we slide it right down beside of that terminal, because it's a little tight to get your voltmeter on,

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the button and we have 24 volt at our terminal.

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The issue is I'm taking my voltmeter and testing right here at this minus terminal and I'm testing to here, to here and to here.

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I'm not actually testing across this PLC input.

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That's where you really have to check at.

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So since it's the FP minus terminal, if I remove my voltmeter from the minus,

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and I connect it over here to the FP minus terminal, can you be my assistant for a second?

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Can you come over and hold that? on button one.

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I had to get my better half note, what do you want to be called?

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Yeah, I'm better.

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I have to get Amber to come help me out on this, but if I check between FP minus and Bye.

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And button one I don't get anything, I get like 0 .3 volts.

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So I don't have power across that PLC input.

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That is the important part, is making sure that that last little bit of circuit is connected.

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Thank you, my lovely assistant.

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If you follow that part of the exercise, then make sure that you put your FP minus back on again, because as we play with these,

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it's really easy to forget to reconnect something.

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So let's do one last check.

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Yeah, button one, button two, button three, button four, switch one.

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So we're good and we're ready to go to our output.

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So the outputs are on the right hand side of our diagram.

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and you're gonna see this common going between all of our lights.

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And in this case, it's going to the minus DC.

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So looking at our diagram, that's gonna be this connection on this side.

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So let's go ahead and do that.

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So we're gonna get a jumper wire from light one to light two, then from light two to light three, then from light three to light four,

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and then from light four over here to the minus of our power supply.

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Now we have a jumper wire from one side of each of our lights, and it's going to the minus of our power supply.

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Next we're going to connect our wire from output 0 to light 1, output 1 to light 2, output 2 to light 3, and output 3 to light 4.

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- Okay, so at this point, we have our lights completely wired.

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And again, just like on our inputs, a lot of people will say, "Okay, I'm done.

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"Let's test it out." Well, let's test it out, just so we can see what will happen right now.

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And if we press button one, nothing happens.

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If we press button 2, nothing happens.

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Three, nothing happens.

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Four, nothing happens.

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Switch one.

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nothing happens.

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Yeah, when we look at the back of it, it all looks wired right.

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If we switch switch one, we do see these lights coming on, but the issue is we haven't completed our circuit.

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So we started with the minus of our power supply.

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We went around to one side of our light, and then we went from our light up to our PLC output, but we've missed again, this little often overlooked part,

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which is the PLC common.

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Or in the case of the compact logics, it's gonna be the FP plus terminal.

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And that's right above that FP minus terminal over here on the power strip.

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So we'll connect a wire from FP plus to the positive of our power supply.

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And now when we press button one, nothing happens.

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Bye.

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Well, it looks like we have a learning opportunity.

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So let's see where I went wrong.

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So at this point, In between our FP plus and our FP minus, we should have 24 volt and we do.

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All right, so when I switch button one, I am seeing the input go on.

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I'm seeing an output.

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So let's check across light one.

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And we have no power.

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So my guess is there's something wrong with my comments.

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I'm just going to go from the plus 24 and I'm gonna check this light.

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Oh, we have 24 volt there.

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Okay, so if you've been following me exactly how I went in this video, then yours is wrong too.

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And the issue is I'm looking over this table and I can't really see what I'm doing.

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And I put all these output wires to the second row, So we need to move them over to this third row,

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which is output 0 through 7.

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So we'll just shift these wires over to the third row.

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There, proof positive I make mistakes.

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Let's try it again.

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Now that we have them hooked on the right outputs, we press button one and the green light illuminates.

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We press button two and the yellow light illuminates.

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We press button three, the red light illuminates.

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We press button 4, the blue light illuminates, and we switch switch 1 and it goes through this sequence of lights.

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And if it does all this, then your trainer is wired right.

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Now, that is if you bought one of our trainers that comes with the Getting Started program.

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I'll put the getting started program down in the description.

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That way you can put it in yours if you didn't buy it from us.

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Now, if yours doesn't do this, then don't get frustrated.

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Use it as like, like I just did a learning opportunity to figure out

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what you did wrong because those are things that you'll run into out in the field.

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And that's one reason our trainers don't come pre -wired.

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It's just, yeah, we want you to learn programming, but the bulk of your problems will not be in the PLC.

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They will actually be in your wiring.

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So this exercise right here is really good for getting a firm understanding not only on how to wire a PLC, but also how to troubleshoot the wiring.

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Now make sure you do watch the sinking and sourcing video that I have a link to down in the description.

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It'll be really important as you move along trying to figure out how to wire a PLC your PLC inputs and outputs.

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One other thing I just thought of is you may be looking at this and saying, boy, that's really a mess.

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Well, you can take yours and you could cut yours and make them really neat.

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Your trainer came with plenty of wire.

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I don't do it because I may take this trainer apart and put it back together 10 times in a day, depending on what exercises we're doing.

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I think that about finishes up this video.

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Please like this video and subscribe because we are putting out a whole series on Studio 5000.

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In fact, we put out at least one video a week.

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Put in the comments any questions you have or suggestions for videos.

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We're always looking for great ideas.

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Till next time.

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Hey buddy, how was your day?

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- What's up?

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What's going on?

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Um, no. Nothing like it.

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Science Fair project.

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What are you thinking?

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I really like the idea of seeing if digested waves can produce electricity.

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Wow.

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So there you go, we may do a science for a video on.

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how to take digesting waste and produce electricity.

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That would be a great idea.

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All right, we'll brainstorm more on it.

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Daddy, you want to know something cool?

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I got an 84 and a test in math!

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How do you get an 84 in math?

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The 90 .1 in the gradebook, I got an 84 in the test.

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That's good!

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That's bad!

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That's good.

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That's bad.

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C would be bad.

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A B is good.

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A 100 is what you should get in math.

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We get B's in English, not in math.

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I have a bunch of for A in English.

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Hey, this is Tim.

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And this is Amber of TW Controls.

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We run the Automation Store.

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Hey, thanks for finding our channel!

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Here's a playlist with some similar videos.

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And YouTube thinks you'll like this video.

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Please like our video and subscribe to our channel.

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And if our videos have helped you make some money and you're not using our products, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

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Till next time.

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See ya!

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Wiring Allen Bradley Compactlogix Sinking Inputs and Sourcing Outputs - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?