Industrial I/O White Papers and Technical Articles
Articles and white papers on I/O used in industrial automation, manufacturing, and machine and process control.
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Isolation Technologies for Reliable Industrial Measurements Voltage, current, temperature, pressure, strain, and flow measurements are an integral part of industrial and process control applications. Often these applications involve environments with hazardous voltages, transient signals, common-mode voltages, and fluctuating ground potentials capable of damaging measurement systems and ruining measurement accuracy. To overcome these challenges, measurement systems designed for industrial applications make use of electrical isolation. This white paper focuses on isolation for analog measurements, provides answers to common isolation questions, and includes information on different isolation implementation technologies. Read complete white paper...
Using the NI Digital I/O High-Reliability Feature Set for Industrial Applications With the recent release of the new families of digital I/O products from National Instruments, our customers now have access to a wide range of high-reliability industrial features that were not previously available. These features include programmable change detection, input filters, programmable power-up states, and digital I/O watchdogs, all of which are programmable through NI-DAQmx. Many of the new products also feature isolated inputs and outputs for connecting to high-voltage, high-current, or high-noise signals. This white paper describes the operation of these features, demonstrates the features in typical scenarios, and illustrates how to program the features in LabVIEW. Read complete white paper...
Using National Instruments High-Voltage Channel-Channel Isolated Counter/Timer Devices in Industrial Applications Whether used for controlling a chemical mixer or analyzing the output frequency of an encoder, counter-timer modules perform a variety of functions. Typical applications include quadrature encoder measurement, edge detection, frequency measurement, pulse-train and pulse-width-modulated (PWM) signal generation. This white paper introduces the new features of the latest National Instruments counter-timer devices and provides concrete examples of industrial applications and specific sensors that demonstrate the benefits of these features. The recently announced NI 6624 counter/timer devices offer channel-channel isolation and a ±48 VDC voltage range on inputs and outputs; they also incorporatee the NI-TIO ASIC and take advantage of NI-DAQmx software technology. Key systems that benefit from high-voltage, channel-channel isolated counter/timer modules include automotive, aerospace, and any other industrial applications that use frequency output sensors such as encoders, counters, flow sensors, torque sensors, timers, tachometers, and actuators driven by pulse train and PWM outputs such as stepper and servo motors. Read complete white paper...
On-MachineTM - On the Cutting Edge of Automation With the current squeeze on capital investments, companies are searching for ways to lower the cost of installing and maintaining automation systems. As a means to this end, they’re finding that moving industrial controls and hardware closer to the application or directly onto the machine saves considerable time and money. This paper examines the scope of On-Machine™ solutions, outlines the key benefits of this growing trend and highlights examples where a distributed, On-Machine architecture has been successful. Read full article(PDF) by Rockwell Automation.
