Articles and News

By Amy Wells, Electroustic Connectors come in all shapes and sizes depending on environment and application. There are literally thousands of options, sometimes for the same job. Inevitably, this can cause a lot of confusion.

An ISA technical paper discusses an H∞ robust controller been designed for a power plant gas turbine.

The three types of processes in the automation industry are self-regulating, integrating, and runaway.

A documenting process calibrator can be used for configuring and calibrating field devices, measuring field inputs and automating calibration procedures.

For control loop tuning, the first settings that must be right are the controller and valve actions. If these actions are not right, nothing else matters.

By Stahlin All enclosure materials ---- stainless steel, polycarbonate and FRP --- will provide protection in a variety of applications. It is critical to evaluate the environmental factors of the application where the enclosure will be used.

By Thomas R. Cutler A successful roll out of automated equipment does not remove or reduce audit requirements for the associated processes. Whether the audit requirement is sourced from industrial standards, or government regulatory compliance, or contractual obligations to an OEM or required by internally mandated safety or quality initiatives, running multiple audit and inspection programs is unavoidable.

By John Rinaldi, Real Time Automation Because of the discontinuity between the factory floor and the Enterprise, opportunities to mine the factory floor for quality data, interrogate and build databases of maintenance data, feed dashboard reporting systems, gather historical data and feed enterprise analytic systems are lost. But there is a reliable, highly secure and reliable solution.

By John Rinaldi Investing in new control and automation systems is an expensive and disruptive activity, particularly when the majority of the data is already instrumented and sitting in controllers, drives, sensors and other devices in the plant. There is a far more cost effective and non-disruptive way to acquire and use the data trapped on the plant floor.

Most LinkedIn groups struggle to grow because they fail to generate member engagement. Here's how to make your group a great success.

In practice, engineers rarely wire devices in a series as any failure could fail loop and/or loop resistance would be too high.

By Alex Perng, Nexcom IoT relies on close connections among sensors, gateways, networks, and servers; and IoT gateways play a key role in building these connections..

Industrial wireless deployment saves significant costs compared to an equivalent wired installation, resulting in savings of 20 to 30 percent in simple configurations.

By Simon Dear, Cynergy3 Components When selecting sensors for liquid level measurement applications, engineers are often faced with numerous technologies and measuring principles to choose from. Here’s an overview of five common level sensing technologies and the applications these are best suited to.

There are many motor control options. Focus on application requirements and choose the best fit to reduce downtime, improve efficiencies & reduce costs.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Reliance Industries Limited chairman is taking a non-traditional approach to drive change. He believes that driving technology into the organization is the fastest way to bring about organizational change. The chairman also believes the use of automation as a tool will drive business transformation and give the company a competitive advantage.

Learn the difference between volumetric flow and mass flow.

Using proper calibration tools and practices ensures true (or accurate) process temperature measurement.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Automation.com conducted a PLC/PAC Automation Experience survey with the goal to gather vendor ratings based on user experiences. The survey also asked questions on specific industry topics, including what are automation’s biggest problems. This inaugural survey had more than 1,000 participants.

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