Control Engineering articles from August 2008

Control Engineering archives from August 2008

Data acquisition: get it right.
August 1, 2008... Mark T. Hoske, Control Engineering Data acquisition quality relies upon how closely the representation of reality matches what's being measured. Drivers who are high insurance risks may explain that the only measurement that matters is the...

The persistence of U.S. engineering.
August 1, 2008... David Greenfield, Editorial Director With the rest of the world rising in economic stature and assuming many of the commodity manufacturing roles formerly performed in the U.S., some are nervous that manufacturing in America will disappear....

Automation, IT Find Teamwork Pays.
August 1, 2008... Jeanine Katzel for Control Engineering Controls and information system personnel are building joint teams that are optimizing manufacturing operations in new ways. Business pressures and technology advances both enable and encourage the...

Partial Stroke Testing.
August 1, 2008... Mark T. Hoske, Control Engineering Integrating valves, systems, and processes can allow partial stroke testing (PST) of emergency shutdown valves, increasing safety and extend time between full stroke testing, thus saving money. But beware...

How Encoders Make Automated Motion Safe.
August 1, 2008... C.G. Masi, Control Engineering Encoders are the sharp point of the machine safety arrow. At its core, automation is defined by control loops, but automated machine safety is more aptly described as an arrow. And that arrow's sharp...

Inspection Systems Benefit from High-tech Components.
August 1, 2008... Renee Robbins, Control Engineering High-speed hardware and sophisticated analysis software help machine builders satisfy their customers' quality control needs. Machine builders wanting to differentiate themselves are always looking...

The hunt for 60+% thermal efficiency.
August 1, 2008... Frank J. Bartos, P.E. In this era of high concern for energy consumption, readily available energy-efficient motors top the 96% mark, electric drives reach 95%, and many appliances and consumer devices exhibit rising efficiency. What,...

Driving Quality With Compliance.
August 1, 2008... Gordon Benzie, Apriso The efforts to bring you into compliance with regulatory requirements can also drive larger company-wide quality efforts. Certainty? "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." If Benjamin Franklin was...

Cleaning Mercury from Power Plants.
August 1, 2008... Mike Wightman, Weed Instrument Measuring emissions to monitor abatement efforts requires sophisticated instrumentation in a very unsophisticated environment. American Electric Power (AEP) may not be one of the most familiar corporate...

Integrating Environmental Processes.
August 1, 2008... Rob McGreevy, Wonderware Environmental controls are a critical part of manufacturing and can be fully integrated into larger plant-wide control systems to leverage reporting and historian capabilities. With rising prices of forest...

Ethernet communication tips.
August 1, 2008... Michael B. Roche, Schneider Electric The details of Ethernet in an industrial environment can be hard to find, and resources specific to industrial Ethernet hard to come by. So here are some tips and specifics that can be useful. Users...

Automated Olympics.
August 1, 2008... Liu Yiliu, Control Engineering China The first two points of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee's three concepts for the 2008 games, "Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics, and People's Olympics," depend heavily on the participation and...

Demystifying ZigBee and its Application.
August 1, 2008... John Schwartz, Digi International A look at the differences between IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee. Wireless networks are becoming more ubiquitous and are implemented using a variety of protocols specifically designed for radio frequency...

Data deletion, or letting go is hard to do.(Column)
August 1, 2008... Dennis Brandl The July 2008 column discussed the advantages of creating a manufacturing operations cloud, a set of servers that provide common services for manufacturing operations. These services include manufacturing execution systems...

Have use for 10,000 robots?
August 1, 2008... Mark T. Hoske, editor-in-chief What would you do with 100 or a few thousand or 10,000 small robots that operate more or less autonomously, exchange information, and decide what's best to do next based on information passed to them by their...

Honeywell wireless equipment ready for ISA 100.
August 1, 2008... Staff Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has announced an updated version of its OneWireless network equipment that anticipates the coming ISA100.11a industrial wireless communication standard. The company says this new release is the...

Automation acquisitions update.
August 1, 2008... Staff Many of the biggest players in the automation and controls space continue to aggressively expand their product lines and global reach with new acquisitions. Here's a rundown of five of the latest moves: - Emerson acquired...

OMAC revises name and mission.(Open Modular Architecture Control Users name change to Organization for Manufacturing Automation and Control )(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Staff Open Modular Architecture Control Users' Group (OMAC) is now the Organization for Manufacturing Automation and Control (OMAC). This name change reflects the evolution of the organization's mission, the group says. The name, proposed...

Cybersecurity podcasts focus on industrial concerns.
August 1, 2008... Staff A series of two podcasts, hosted by Control Engineering 's Renee Robbins and Peter Welander, features interviews with Matt Luallen of the SANS Institute and Sph3r3. Part 1 explores the evolving concepts of cybersecurity in industrial...

RTU logs data to USB devices.
August 1, 2008... Staff Control Microsystems (Kanata, Ontario Canada) has introduced what it says is the industry's first use of USB storage devices for data logging in the demanding environments of SCADA applications. Walk-up SCADA uses removable USB...

Wind power demand drives Siemens expansion.
August 1, 2008... Staff Siemens Drives Technologies is building a second plant in Elgin, IL, for its drives technologies business to increase production of drives for wind turbines. Siemens, the largest producer of wind turbine gear drives in the U.S.,...

Barcode scanners tutorial offered.
August 1, 2008... Staff Few things today would disrupt society more than if barcode scanners stopped working. But what is a barcode and how does a barcode scanner work? MechatronicsZone.com presents Mechatronics On-Demand Webcasts to explore the role...

Speedier production management application development.
August 1, 2008... Staff The application development capabilities of Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk ProductionCentre have been updated and expanded to help users save time and money when building and deploying manufacturing production applications across...

Embedded controllers increase performance.
August 1, 2008... Staff National Instruments (NI) released three new Compact FieldPoint controllers that deliver increased performance, higher processor speed, and improved Ethernet throughput. The NI cFP-2220, cFP-2210 and cFP-2200 controllers include a...

Eliminating diagnostic delays.
August 1, 2008... Staff Manufacturing automation and control systems are increasingly complex, and when plant engineers have a problem, they are asking support service providers to do more. That means vendor support organizations must handle more calls,...

RFID security breach.
August 1, 2008... Staff The security of a widely used radio frequency identification (RFID) chip has been broken by European researchers. The SANS Institute said researchers at a Dutch university broke the security of the Mifare RFID chip, which is used...

NEMA, EEI offer energy efficiency help to utilities.
August 1, 2008... Staff Meeting the energy efficiency requirements of the year 2010 starts now. Electric utilities can now more quickly incorporate energy-efficient electric transformers into their distribution grids because of a new program from Edison...

By the Numbers.
August 1, 2008... Staff >30 tips for hypermiling (exceeding the EPA mpg ratings for a vehicle) are available in the article "Beating the EPA--the Whys and How to Hypermile." Mileage logs often show 20% gains in mpg, even for vehicles that are not hybrids....

Data for dashboards without IT.
August 1, 2008... Staff Data Miner 2.0 data reporting software for manufacturing from Aegis Software streamlines the way engineers, managers, and executives access volumes of manufacturing information to create reports and analytics. It can retrieve,...

'Ring scanner' reads bar codes.
August 1, 2008... Staff LXE Inc. has introduced the 8650 Bluetooth Ring Scanner for use by mobile workers in supply-chain environments. The small, lightweight scanner rests on a finger, with the Bluetooth module worn on the back of the hand or wrist. The...

Speed control I/O for pump, fan motors.
August 1, 2008... Staff Beckhoff Automation has announced the KL2791 Bus Terminal for single-phase ac motor speed control, suitable for drives with quadratic load characteristics such as fans and pumps. It enables direct connection of small, 1 A,...

Handheld test, calibration.
August 1, 2008... Staff The Advanced Modular Calibration System from GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies is a handheld test and calibration system with a multifunction calibrator with pressure measurement and pressure generation capability. A modular...

Mini-joystick for industrial applications.
August 1, 2008... Staff Elobau Sensor Technology Inc. has released the J1 mini-joystick, which can be operated by thumb or fingertip actuation. It is designed to be incorporated into a larger, manual joystick for secondary tasks or into a control panel with...

IP30-rated wireless LAN access points.
August 1, 2008... Staff Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc. has introduced the Scalance W784 line of IP30-rated wireless LAN access points that offer high data security, deterministic control to prioritize client traffic, and flexibility of IEEE 802.11b/g/a...

For dc electric fastening.
August 1, 2008... Staff Stanley Assembly Technologies has introduced the QA Alpha controller for dc electric fastening. The controller, which has enhanced process capabilities and embedded toolbox software, is compatible with Stanley QPM dc electric tools,...

Industrial USB to serial adapters.
August 1, 2008... Staff Sealevel Systems has released two additions to the SeaLINK USB to serial product line--the SeaLINK+4M.SC and SeaLINK+8M.SC. The units' four or eight serial ports are software-configurable for RS-232, RS-422, or RS-485 without the...

Desktop process analysis; Experion upgrade.
August 1, 2008... Staff Honeywell has announced Uniformance Process Studio, a desktop software package that allows plant engineers to analyze process performance. A user-friendly interface includes workflow management applications that help engineers build...

IP-67-rated sensor actuator interfaces.
August 1, 2008... Staff Weidmuller's line of Active Sensor Actuator Interfaces (SAIs) supports Ethernet and Ethernet/IP protocols, as well as Profibus-DP, CANopen, Modbus and DeviceNet. Three configurable modules provide wiring flexibility for achieving...

Distributed controller has Profinet.
August 1, 2008... Staff The Simatic ET 200S IM151-8 PN/DP CPU module from Siemens Energy & Automation Inc. adds another CPU to the company's ET 200S I/O family of distributed I/O devices. Communicating via Profinet, the new CPU is similar in power and...

Flowmeters.
August 1, 2008... Dick Johnson, Control Engineering Global competition keeps the pressure on both flowmeter performance and cost issues, with no letup in sight. In the novel about depression-era circus life, "Water for Elephants," Jacob Jankowski--now a...

Packagers speak out.
August 1, 2008... Staff If you could tell the machine builders you work with one thing to make their product / service offerings more attractive, what would it be? Be willing and able to follow my corporate standards, and utilize standard components...

Shifting safety responsibilities.
August 1, 2008... David Greenfield, Control Engineering A new ANSI standard will move certain safety responsibilities from employers to OEMs and machine tool providers. Packaging OEMs are already responding. For years the bottom line for worker safety...

It's a small world for OEMs.
August 1, 2008... John Kalkowski, Packaging Digest Packaging machinery makers may be few in number, but they are finding a world of opportunities in automating their customers' operations. Packaging equipment manufacturers are a relatively small group...

Machine builders influence, interpret packagers' needs.
August 1, 2008... Staff Part two of the Automation in Packaging Benchmark Study talked to machine builders to understand the stressors and opportunities facing their businesses, and their perceptions of what their customers want. Packaging is big...

Wireless Level Monitoring.
August 1, 2008... Staff Better inventory measurements, higher efficiency and safety, and environmental compliance are among results from three wireless level monitoring implementations. Here's how and why. Wireless is helping with level monitoring in...

Proximity Sensing Via Wireless Network.
August 1, 2008... Staff A railcar wheel monitoring system shows how a wireless network sensor operates reliably in extreme temperatures, high vibration, and dirt, with five years between battery changes. A manufacturer of railcar moving equipment needed...

Industrial Wireless Implementation Guide.
August 1, 2008... Mark T. Hoske, Control Engineering So you've dabbled in wireless or thought it might save time, effort, or dollars. This primer helps with technology selection; subsequent articles in this supplement and online at www.controleng.com reveal...

Survey Says: Users Demand Wireless Monitoring, Control Products.
August 1, 2008... Jim Taylor, Venture Development Corp. 19% annual growth in wireless (radio frequency or microwave) monitoring and control products through 2012 demonstrates value for data acquisition systems, networking, operator interfaces, remote...

Industrial exemption, eCAD.
August 1, 2008... Staff Industrial exemption issues Nuts. The Industrial Exemption has been a sop to industry long enough [Legalities: Does PE licensing matter? June 2008]. I hear a lot of crying from so-called engineers who are afraid to take the exam....

'Cool' design for power supplies.
August 1, 2008... Dr. Werner Woelfle, TracoPower Modern mains power supplies are extremely compact, but dissipate a substantial amount of power as heat while operating. This very often leads to overheating of internal components, which in turn has an...