Articles and News

Automation.com, December 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Maintenance strategy is becoming an important topic because of aging systems and the lack of experienced personnel. The goal of a maintenance strategy is to achieve the highest automation system availability consistent with the organization's safety, capital investment and profit goals.

Be extremely careful to select knowledgeable technicians to install capillary seals. Many a pipefitter has pulled them out of the box and bolted them up without the proper gaskets and spacers. If this

By Mark Howard, Zettlex Inductive sensor terminology and techniques can be confusing. This article explains the various types and operating principles, as well as their consequent strengths and weaknesses.

Automation.com, December 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Emerson is expanding their role of providing lifecycle services and achieving the "trusted advisor" status with customers. With the addition of new employees and products, they are positioning themselves to better serve process automation users.

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor The automation industry has been centered on a five layer hierarchical architecture for years but new technology is making it possible to streamline this model to eliminate layers, increase performance, and lower software maintenance costs.

Employ setpoint filters, velocity limits and external-reset feedback to meet the process control objectives at your plant or facility.

Use disturbance rejection tuning, external-reset feedback, and a setpoint filter in your PID controller to achieve loop performance objectives.

Recently I watched the movie Apollo 13 again, this time including my four children who had never seen the cinematic classic. I’ve personally seen it too many times to count; it’s one of my favorites

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor At a recent annual update, Schneider Electric's Jeff Drees said their big software bet is centered on StruxureWare Software - a platform and suite of applications between automation and enterprise computing.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Magmeters

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Industrial Ethernet protocols, coupled with low cost pervasive Ethernet technology, have made the support of multiple protocols on a single controller a reality, enabling users to leverage the advantages of various networks and make technology additions to existing systems.

By Mike Hughes, Schaeffler Specifying linear motion systems isn’t the black art many engineers think it is. Here are some useful tips on how to select suitable linear actuators for single and multi-axis positioning systems.

Use precise valves, scheduled tuning, external-reset feedback, directional rate setpoint limits, and an enhanced PID to stop split range oscillations.

Auto-tuning of cascade control systems

By Ingenia Field Oriented torque Control of a brushless motor is possible using one shunt sensing circuitry, obtaining an ultra-low cost but high performances device.

Automation.com, November 2012 By Bill Lydon, Editor Homeland Security's Lisa Kaiser gave a sobering presentation on cyber security issues and attacks. Kaiser emphasized that we are playing catch-up, noting that Foreign Cyber Espionage in the USA has been more intense in the last few years with a large black market for buying and selling information.

By Peter Seeberg and Jürgen Lange, Softing An OPC toolkit is a collection of libraries, classes and interfaces that simplify the development of OPC applications for programmers by providing standard functions for reading and writing OPC items, browsing and managing the OPC address space, and much more.

Designing and/or improving a control system is practically impossible if the team does not understand the process.

Technical Spec Writing and Modbus Protocol Training

On-off valves should not be used as control valves (for throttling) and control valves should not be used as on-off valves (for isolation).