re: Industrial Automation / PLCs

Check out plcs.net. They have some good books that can get you going.

Best way is to buy something like an automation direct click(free software) and a couple of lights and switches. Try building different things and making them work. Ebay is your friend.

Once you get the basics down its just a matter of seeing different approaches in logic that other people have done and figuring things out on your own.

Ive been doing plc and scada work for over 10 years. I prefer doing scada. My biggest complaint about plcs is that something I can do in 3 lines of code in software takes 100's of rungs in ladder logic. Problem is that visual representation in ladder is good for the technicians that are troubleshooting.

Ignition by inductive automation is a good scada software that has an unlimited 2 hour trial, so if you want to play with a scada software, it is a good choice.