Hi

I'm Rob, lead tutor or whatever you want to call me. I live in Leicestershire with my wife and 3 children/adults. I'm a self employed electrician/controls engineer. In the very little spare time I have these days I'm completely addicted to playing my guitars.

I got into electrical controls after spending years of working with pneumatic controls systems, this gave me a good understanding of circuits but I was missing the electrical theory. Anyway I got myself off to night school and get myself all the electrical qualifications the college offered, armed with my handful of City & Guilds certificates I went in search of an electricians job, I found an opportunity as a maintenance engineer, mainly due to my mechanical knowledge but electrical installation, controls projects, fault finding was all part of the role, I was more than happy with this!

Problem was, I didn't have any experience of this side of things, I learnt quick from the other engineers and I invested (well actually mostly convinced the company they needed to invest) in numerous courses to increase my knowledge further, I was keen to do everything in house especially the controls projects.

I went on to do the Higher National courses, HNC, HND in search of everything I needed to consider myself as an expert in my field, I'll let you know when I do feel like an expert!

What I did learn is that many courses not only don't contain everything you need, but especially in the case of the Higher Nationals, they contain a lot of filler material "fluff" that packs these courses out, I swear 5 years of Uni study could have been 2 at the very most. You don't need to know how to add hexadecimal numbers together, advanced calculus or business studies to design and build a control system. You would benefit from this knowledge if you want to design a PLC but it's just not required to program one.

The most valuable learning came from manufacturers training days, online courses and of course experience.

When I started out there wasn't online learning like there is now, you had to get off your backside and get yourself into the classroom, what I'm offering here is a route to gain this knowledge much quicker but in your own time. I wish I'd have had this opportunity, another downside to being older!

After spending literally thousands of hours developing a diverse range of skills and yes computers and PLC's were about (I'm not that old!) but the quality of simulators and other amazing learning tools weren't about as they are now, it's literally now possible to program and simulate an entire production line on your computer with all the sensors, buttons and lights that a real system has, all viewed in 3D.

The result of removing the fluff is you learn quicker with a reduced chance of becoming bored and giving up.

We do have to ensure the learning is thorough though, we can cut the fluff but not the essentials, it may not all be exciting but it is relevant.