PLC

New Pump Profiles Enhance Wastewater Treatment Plant Controls Upgrade

George Shurtleff — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:23:03 +0000

The Glenelg Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) is one of three large wastewater plants in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia, a city ranked in the top 10 of The Economist’s “World’s Most Livabl

The challenge: replace the entire control system without shutting down some critical parts of the treatment plant for longer than four hours. The plan: Perform the commissioning process in 14 separate stages over a six-month period.

Column

Integrator View

Siemens Shows the Importance of Software

Gary Mintchell — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:56:09 +0000

I still pretty well remember the launch of the S7 controllers from Siemens (www.siemens.com) in the mid-nineties.

The low-key presentation of S-1500 family hardware during the SPS IPC Drives 2012 press conference doesn’t mean hardware has lost all importance. It just indicates that software, and especially the TIA Portal, has significantly gained in importance.

News

Statue of Liberty Offers Lessons in Machine Retrofits

Dave Greenfield — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:25:51 +0000

Few national icons are as recognized and revered worldwide as the Statue of Liberty.

A $27 million renovation to the Statue of Liberty includes a new emergency elevator designed using Siemens’ TIA portal. The safety retrofit process used for this new elevator design holds numerous lessons for manufacturers looking to upgrade their own machine safety systems.

Case Application

Integrated PLC/HMIs Rated for Hazardous Locations

Lara Krieger — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Equipped for industries such as oil and petrochemical, some of the newly rated products include: the V570-57-T20B (PLC + 5.7” color touch HMI), the V570-57-T20B-J (PLC + 5.7” flat fascia color touc

Unitronics is proud to announce that even more of their products are now suitable for hazardous locations with UL Class I, Division 2 ratings.

Product

Wago Corporation: Integrated PLC and HMI

Peter Cleaveland — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:06:41 +0000

The unit is available with five sizes of TFT touch screens (3.5 inch, 5.7 inch, 10.4 inch, 12.1 inch and 15 inch), and an expansive selection of ports: Ethernet (Modbus/TCP), CANopen, USB, RS-232 a

The PERSPECTO CP TV merges an HMI and a PLC into one package.

Product

Discrete, Process Automation and Packaging Come Together at The Automation Conference

GrantGerke — Wed, 23 May 2012 01:04:20 +0000

The Automation Conference, a two-day event held May 22 to 23 in Rosemont (Chicago), IL., opened the day with keynote speaker, Sid Venkatesh, associate technical fellow, Boeing, with his presentatio

The first annual Automation Conference, bringing together process, discrete and packaging professionals in one conference, kicked off this morning with keynotes speakers from Boeing and ExxonMobil.

News

Continuous Process Challenges Controls Retrofit Team

admin8675309 — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Rendering is the process of recycling waste animal tissue into stable materials that are used as ingredients in making livestock and pet rations and other products. Upgrades to a rendering plant are particularly challenging because the plant receives a continuous stream of waste tissue from processing plants that has nowhere else to go.

Column

Adapting Packaging Machines to PLC Control

admin8675309 — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

An Automation World LinkedIn group member seeks advice on how best to convert his packaging machine designs for PLC control and avoid technology supplier pressure to buy all system components from one source.

Perspective

Pack Expo 2011 - Video Coverage

admin8675309 — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Mintchell Video Report - Pack

The Automation World staff attended the Pack Expo Las Vegas 2011 show in late September and shot video of the latest automation and control products at the show.

News

ABB Opens New Solar Inverter Production Center

admin8675309 — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:54:31 +0000

Center will feature a 400 megawatt per year capacity as well as an engineering center to support inverter production and nearby motors and drives factories.

News

Security: Belden Acquires Canadian-Based Byres Security

admin8675309 — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:00:00 +0000

According to Joann and Eric Byres, the company will continue to operate
independently as a business unit under Belden. The Tofino Security brand

Belden Inc. has acquired Byres Security Inc. today. Belden is one of several companies that has been filling out its portfolio by making smaller, strategic acquisitions.

News

Packaging: What's the Value of Open Architecture?

admin8675309 — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Automation World’s sister publication, Packaging World (www.packworld.com),

Automation World’s sister publication, Packaging World, recently posed the following question to its LinkedIn group known as Packaging Machinery.

Perspective

Powering the World Trade Center Site

admin8675309 — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:12:12 +0000

The new World Trade Center site is one of the most complex projects ever undertaken and involves the resurrection of America’s tallest building, the creation of a Memorial Museum featuring the two

Siemens Industry Inc. is providing more than $12 million in building technology, power distribution and automation solutions to the rebuilt World Trade Center site and memorial museum.

News

Hurricane Season and Manufacturing Best Practices

admin8675309 — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:05:12 +0000

Below are some best practices on how to approach equipment that has met with some or considerabler water damage.

With certain areas of the United States still devastated by flooding and more tropical storms coming, Schneider Electric, (www.schneider-electric.com/us), is urging businesses to take every precaution with electrical equipment in preparation for the hurricane season.

News

PLC with Integrated HMI

admin8675309 — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Duo features two serial gates, RS-232 and RS-485 for connectivity, and native Modbus RTU protocol (master and slave) support.

Duo Series is a new line of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) with human machine interfaces (HMIs) incorporated.

Product

Teamwork, New PLCs Improve Printer Control

admin8675309 — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Andy Banaczyk, head of maintenance at Rock-Tenn, said they had to physically test each interlock until they located the fault.

Rock-Tenn’s printing plant in Jacksonville, Fla. was experiencing gradually increasing unreliability of its automation systems. The systems produced too many false alarms, and there was no feedback as to where the problem was and no diagnostic tools.

Perspective

Manufacturing Technology Orders Up 103.9% from June 2010

admin8675309 — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 05:00:00 +0000

June U.S.

According to a joint report from AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology and AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association, industry is on track to produce orders equal to all of 2010 by the end of August 2011.

News

Guide to Process Gases Good Practices Released

admin8675309 — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 05:00:00 +0000

The International Socie

ISPE guide covers international guidelines and regulations for biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical manufacturing process streams.

News

Cloudy with a Chance for Profits

admin8675309 — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:59:52 +0000

The theme of this year's MES/MOM conference is "Cloudy with a Chance for Profits" industry leaders will share real-world experiences about maximizing returns within their operations.ÊHosted at the

The MESA International North American Conference kicks off in Orlando, Florida September 19-23.

News

Re-engineered Arc-Resistant Motor Control Centers

admin8675309 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:11:45 +0000

A re-engineered family of motor control centers (MCCs) are arc-resistance, compliant with ANSI/IEEE C37.20.7 standards and filled with features designed to serve water and wastewater, oil and gas,

A re-engineered family of motor control centers (MCCs) are arc-resistance, compliant with ANSI/IEEE C37.20.7 standards and filled with features designed to serve water and wastewater, oil and gas, and general process industries.

Product

Boeing, Siemens Form Strategic Energy Alliance

admin8675309 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:34:12 +0000

Just when you thought you were up to speed on the latest energy advances by getting a good grasp on the idea of the

The partnership is centered around development of secure microgrid energy management applications for the Department of Defense.

News

6th Annual ISA Marketing & Sales Summit Announces Keynote Speakers

admin8675309 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:00:28 +0000

The International Society of Automation (ISA) announces the keynote speakers for the 6th Annual ISA Marketing & Sales Summit to be held in St. Louis, Missouri September 7-9, 2011. The four keynote addresses will focus on various aspects of the summit's theme, "Customer 2.0."

News

The State of Manufacturing in the Current Economy

admin8675309 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:47:18 +0000

Gravitt is responsible for developing a consistent and aligned strategy for Schneider Electric'

At the beginning of 2011, manufacturing numbers were positive. But then the economy started showing signs of uncertainty. Andy Gravitt, senior vice president, Industry Business at Schneider Electric, talked with Automation World Editor in Chief Gary Mintchell about what has been happening to the economy and Schneider Electric in particular.

News

eBay Uses GE Solution for Data Center Critical Uptime

admin8675309 — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:33:42 +0000

When one of the largest companies in the e-commerce industry, looks to increase the stability of its data center, a critical component to its business strategy, a central "must-have" is continuous

eBay's Topaz data center uses GE Quad PAC Redundancy Control Solution for mission critical uptime requirement, reduced power consumption. Infrastructure investment to avoid $2,000 per second impact for downtime.

News

iPads and Automation

admin8675309 — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:58:35 +0000

If you do any traveling at all, the sight of iPads and other tablet PCs in airports and at conferences is fast becoming commonplace.

Apps are springing up for all kinds of automation uses, ranging from remote monitoring to test and measurement. Are iPads and other tablet PCs destined to become part of the automation engineer’s toolbox?

News