Eric Lund  |  Burr Oak Tool, Inc.

Tom was very instrumental in designing our software to last well into the future.  With his help, we laid out the digital I/O for our machine to account for the conceivable options that might occur in the future.  He laid out the software so that options are enabled or disabled by setting a single bit.  We have been using this machine control software for over two years without having to rewrite it.  This has allowed us to add more features and options rather than having to rewrite and revalidate basic machine code.  We have over 30 machines running the same root program which means we can easily support any of our customers or upgrade them to the latest revisions.

Tom developed the communications between our Simatic PLC and Pilz safety controller.  We now get status messages from the safety controller over Profibus and create messages for display on our HMI which allows our customers to quickly determine the source of safety faults without connecting a PC.