Articles and News

Understanding Three-Phase Power is a quiz question from the ISA course, Electrical Controls for the Control Systems Technician (TI23).

A look at some of the many educational opportunities from ISA in December 2015.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The Internet of Things (IoT) is creating a flood of new technology. As a result, the automation industry is fortunate to have an expanding range of technologies available to solve problems, improve operations, and increase productivity. The challenge is to sort out the options and keep focused on worthy automation goals.

There are usually few arguments against building a resilient automation system with a design strategy, which can respond to non-normal conditions.

Circuits should be de-energized. Place the mode switch in “OHMS”, short the meter leads together, then press the “REL” button

By Pat McLaughlin, Boulting Technology Switchboards generally have relatively long lives and can last anywhere between 25 and 40 years. Here’s what companies should keep in mind when choosing a switchboard.

Career advice for a new industrial automation engineer: seek knowledge, focus on effective communication, strive for excellence and get involved.

By Bill Lydon, Editor The growing need in the biotechnology industry for many new products that serve smaller populations is driving manufacturers to consider highly flexible, modular facilities. The emerging “Factory of the Future” model is intended to address this new customized, small-batch product demand.

"OR" gate, in relation to an electronic circuit, allows any of the conditions in parallel to provide electrical or logical continuity.

By Scott Cameron, ASCO Numatics Several types of valves are used to control cooling in the fermentation stage of industrial winemaking. The wine cooling process itself is fairly straightforward. But examining that process may highlight how valves can function as surprisingly important ingredients in improving a wide variety of cooling applications.

Considerable confusion exists on how the PID Form affects tuning settings. Lack of understanding of Form & units of settings can lead to disastrous results.

By Nick Boughton, Boulting Group Connected devices have infiltrated every aspect of our lives, including the most traditional industry sectors. Here arethe challenges connectivity poses for industry, particularly with regard to systems integration and the water industry.

By Subhajit Bagchi, Belden In the factories of the future, smart communications will become increasingly critical in all aspects of the operation. As models for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) mature and become hardened realities, the technologies and strategies for connecting machines will be essential for enabling increased efficiency, resiliency and productivity.

Today’s powerful automation platforms offer more diagnostic and situational awareness capabilities than ever before; they just need to be put into service.

Subsea technologies are evolving at breakneck speed. There is a pressing need for optimum productivity and offshore operators are willing to invest in promising technologies.

Absolute pressure is zeroed against a perfect vacuum. Gauge pressure is zeroed against the local atmospheric pressure.

By Brian Booth, NCH Europe While my generation were classically trained chemists recruited to solve problems with scale, corrosion and bacteria in the water industry, new graduates are now required to have a deeper understanding of general issues affecting the whole industry.

A novel adaptive tuning method for classical proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller to control nonlinear processes to adjust PID gains

By Bill Lydon, Editor This year Siemens launched a new line of panel controls and indicators named the SIRIUS ACT. This product line overhaul was based on learning from customers, new design methods, leveraging new technology, and applying new manufacturing methods.

Maximum cybersecurity protection is possible only when cybersecurity protection is embedded deeply into a municipal infrastructure from birth.