Mobile educational workbench for classical and programmable control applications

We describe the design and the implementation of a prototype mobile educational workbench for classical control and programmable logic controller (PLC) applications. It serves as a solution for the difficulties which technical students face in both classical and programmable controller laboratories. In addition, a comparison between the suggested solution and the traditional procedures at the laboratory is held. The traditional ways have many drawbacks e.g. the long time required for conducting the experiments, the high cost for the used equipment and the risks of electric shock during the connection process. Those drawbacks may obstruct the students to gain the sufficient technical skills in the field of industrial control. The mobile educational unit has been designed to facilitate the installation process and to safely assemble any control circuit with a 5-minute average time per student while in traditional ways an average time of 90-minute per student is required in the group of three students. In addition, the unit reduces the total cost to cover all semester's experiments by 86% less than the traditional ways that have seven groups as an average. Moreover, it allows wide range of experiments to be performed, raising their numbers from seven experiments by the traditional ways to 12 or more. Using this unit not only enhances the troubleshooting ability which promotes the understanding levels of the students, but also improves the creativity of finding new or developed solutions by applying the self-learning technique.