Note: Updated For 2025

You can learn a lot about PLC programming from books. Everything from ladder logic and structured text, to how to use specific PLC platforms like the Siemens S7-1200.

In this collection below you will find all the best PLC programming books. Some of them are free to download as pdf and some are sold as books or e-books.

I curated this collection to help you navigate the vast sea of PLC programming books, ensuring you invest your time and money in quality resources that truly benefit you.

Online you will find many different types of PLC programming books. Most of them are about PLC programming in general. You can for [...]

One of the best visual programming languages is a PLC programming language called ladder logic or ladder diagram (LD).

The great thing about ladder logic is that it’s much more visual than most programming languages, so people often find it a lot easier to learn.

What’s cool about ladder logic is its resemblance to electrical relay circuits. This means if you’re somewhat familiar with relay control and electrical circuits, you’ll likely pick up ladder logic more swiftly.

But that’s definitely not a requirement, and I myself didn’t understand relays when I first learned ladder logic.

Building and simulating ladder logic PLC programs is entirely free. This guide will walk you through the simple steps to download, install, and use the RSLogix Micro Starter Lite and the RSLogix Emulate 500, letting you test your PLC programs without spending a dime.

Think of ladder logic symbols as the essential pieces of a puzzle in ladder diagrams. This guide covers all these crucial symbols, as defined in IEC 61131-3, and offers them for download in various formats, including a handy PDF.

This is an introduction to PLC logic. You can use PLC logic to build PLC programs with simple electrical circuit diagrams. In this article, I will use combinatorial logic to build the functionality of a PLC program.

And to get as close as possible to real a PLC programming language like ladder logic, the PLC logic in this article will be contacts and relays in an electrical circuit.

The basic architecture of a PLC is important to understand. It is crucial to know about the basic PLC hardware components that are inside PLC, because it will make your understanding of the PLC much easier. The hardware components are the physical building blocks of the PLC.

Now, that we know what hardware is inside the PLC, the next step will be to take a look at the software inside the PLC and how it runs.

Every PLC has a scan time and a scan cycle. This is how the PLC and the software inside the PLC works.

The scan cycle is the cycle in which the PLC gathers the inputs, runs your PLC program, and then updates the outputs.

This will take some amount of time often measured in milliseconds (ms).

The amount of time it takes for the PLC to make one scan cycle is called the scan time of the PLC.

Before getting started with the PLC programming, let me illustrate some basic concepts about a PLC program.

If you know about the PLC scan time, you can start to explore how the PLC program works. Combinatorial logic gives you the basic understanding of how combining the two states – true and false with logic. The basics of PLC programming is combining logic. That’s why combinatorial logic can be a great way into PLC programming. Since the fundamentals of combinatorial logic and PLC programming are the same.