Industrial Maintenance Resources

I'm back from another hiring venture for engineering technicians. The field is called multi-craft maintenance. Another name is "mechatronics". It seems that finding people with the right broad skill sets is very hard. A lot of the promising candidates haven't refreshed their basics for many years. I mentioned to a few candidates some resources which they might want to have to brush up on their basic skills.

So, If you stumbled across this looking for hints, here are a few key trade resources:

• Audel Mechanical Trades Pocket Manual
• Ugly's Electrical References - the other Uglys books are good too.
• Rigging Pocket Guide

For PLCs and electronics there are a lot of online resources. Use your google-fu or drop me a line if you need hints for starting places.