Control and Instrumentation articles from May 1997

Control and Instrumentation archives from May 1997

From the horse's mouth. (1997 Control & Instrumentation Europe Show)
May 1, 1997... No, this is not a comment on the election. By the time you read this, it will already be over, so there's little point in politics here! What I want to address is a real engineering opportunity - in fact the only one this year - to get to...

Fieldbus alliances continue to shift? (Fieldbus Foundation)
May 1, 1997... The antics of the main fieldbus protagonists, Fieldbus Foundation (FF) and Profibus, continue to provide the industry with theatrical diversion. Recent events have confirmed that papering over the cracks is not - by any stretch of the imagination...

Integrating control? (open-distributed computing)
May 1, 1997... Openness in a distributed, object-orientated computing environment is not just about interfacing and sheer connectivity; there are key programming and resource management issues to bolt down. And it looks like we're almost there... yet again...

CORBA - or Active X. (core inter-object communication component; object linking and embedding standards)
May 1, 1997... OLE and subsequently OLE2 and the whole COM/DCOM/OLE/ActiveX world has fine aspirations. But does it give the right tools? In the first of a two part feature we look at this and the CORBA efforts of the Object Management Group towards openness...

Operating systems. (computers)
May 1, 1997... Operating systems for systems involved with real time control and automation have some pretty special requirements. Are desktop OSs, like Windows NT, suitable? Chemical processing requires a high degree of accuracy for the control processes,...

The problem scenario. (Use of PLC technology for process control)
May 1, 1997... Applying structured methods to projects and in the validation of PLC software can reap very substantial dividends for all concerned Applying PLC technology to process control is commonplace - but the success of some applications is far from...

Control systems. (process control)
May 1, 1997... There's still more than PC and Microsoft technologies to distributed and integrated control systems Last year saw something of a watershed for control systems. It marked the point at which the large process system vendors (the former DCS...

Lifecycle information. (industrial control and instrumentation systems)
May 1, 1997... Protocols for instrumentation data The 'snapshot approach' to exchanging plant data with paperwork will change as STEP gains ground End-users are demanding a standard system for the electronic interchange of plant data information, which is...

Measuring humidity: breaking the PPB barrier. (parts per billion)
May 1, 1997... Moisture measurement continues to present designers of instrumentation with interesting challenges For many years the moisture measurement industry has concerned itself principally with humidity ranges of -75 [degrees] C dew point upwards. In...

Weighing update. (industrial weighing)
May 1, 1997... By now, the dust will have settled; there is a new Parliament. But what is the relevance of this to a feature on industrial weighing? Put quite simply, it could mean the battle for serf-verification has been lost - or at least shelved. It was...

Fieldbus '97: progress or prognostication?
May 1, 1997... There are many contenders, but none go to all the destinations to handle all the needs of industry yet. Should we wait longer? The April fieldbus conference organised by the Institute of Measurement and Control and ISA England Section in London...

The future for process control.
May 1, 1997... This year's UKACC lecture by Roger Benson provided an insight into the future for the process industries The ability to exploit process control effectively is the key to being successful in highly competitive markets. This is particularly true...