A Low-Cost PLC Setup for Educational Use: Transforming Existing Equipment into Comprehensive Automation Training

Abstract

Engineering colleges worldwide face a persistent paradox: expensive automation equipment — PLCs, HMIs, MCBs, and sensors — lies idle in storage while students lack the hands-on industrial training demanded by Industry 4.0. This study presents a low-cost, reuse based PLC laboratory developed at Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Pune, and evaluates its educational effectiveness through a controlled empirical study conducted over one 16-week semester. We hypothesize that systematic repurposing of existing institutional automation equipment, combined with an integrated eight-experiment, project-based curriculum spanning EPLAN electrical design, IEC 61131-3 PLC programming, HMI development, industrial communication protocols, physical wiring, and sensor integration, produces automation competencies statistically equivalent to those achieved on commercial training platforms, at approximately 90% lower cost per workstation ( 33,000 versus 3,42,000). Results confirm this hypothesis. The cohort achieved a composite post-test score of 83.2% compared to a pre-test baseline of 29.5%, yielding a mean gain of 53.7 percentage points (paired t-test, p < 0.001). Student confidence ratings averaged 4.4/5.0, marginally exceeding published benchmarks for commercial platforms (4.3/5.0). Findings demonstrate that the principal barriers to high-quality automation education are organizational and pedagogical rather than financial, and that the proposed model is scalable and directly replicable by resource-constrained institutions globally.