Conveyor sorting line · Lab · Çoruh Şimşek

A small production line from a university project: a conveyor belt, a metal sensor and pistons, run by ladder logic on a Siemens PLC, sending parts down different paths by colour and material.

What it is

FIG. 1How a part gets sorted. One part, one pass. My notes do not record how many paths the line had, so the drawing shows one.
Source: My interview notes, 1 Nov 2026

A small production line I made for a university project. Parts ride a conveyor belt past a metal sensor, and pistons send each one down a different path. The line changed mode depending on a part's colour and material.

The controller is a Siemens PLC from the SIMATIC S7 family. I wrote its program in ladder logic, and I also built the line around it: the belt, the sensor and the pistons.

What happened

Ladder logic is the classic language of factory controllers. It is drawn like an old relay wiring diagram: each rung has conditions on the left and an output on the right, and the controller scans every rung, top to bottom, over and over. A sorting line maps onto it almost word for word. A rung reads like "if this sensor is on and the line is in this mode, fire that piston".

It belongs with the other physical things I have made, from my own circus props to the lightboard studios. I like picturing something in my head and then making it real.