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Manufacturing Automation

From Pushbutton to PC

By: Natalie Shannon and Frank Levy

 

ATR Wire and Cable Company Inc., a steel cord production company that fabricates brass-plated tire cord for use in the tire manufacturing industry, was facing the challenges that many manufacturers are dealing with in today's economy. They wanted to increase their productivity and reduce their downtime.

The company did just that by implementing new automation software that has the ability to communicate with PLCs or RTUs connected to the equipment on the plant floor, and portraying the resulting data as a combination of comprehensive animated graphics and numeric data.

Each of ATR's three production lines brass plates 60 parallel lines of steel cord simultaneously at linear speeds of 25 to 40 meters per minute.

In December of 2001, with the help of Trihedral Engineering Limited, ATR smoothly made the transition, with the first of three production lines, from a light panel, pushbutton, and switch-based operation to a fully-integrated, PC-based application. The customized application is equal to the task of relaying the data of this system to operators on a PC monitor.

The software application is Visual Tag System (VTS) developed by Trihedral Engineering Limited of Bedford, Nova Scotia. VTS is monitoring and control automation software that offers the development of functional and operator-friendly interfaces for the equipment in virtually any type of industry.

ATR's VTS application features a series of easily navigable screens that provide a detailed look at the status of the plating line equipment. An overview screen displays the layout of the entire line, providing operators with a synopsis of all equipment and processes. The overview screen is exceptional in its clarity, using graphics to replicate the appearance of the physical equipment on the plant floor, making the system instantly recognizable, even to the most novice operator.

 

 

The PL-101 Overview screen for the ATR VTS application features a replication of the equipment on the plant floor.

At a mouse-click of any of the stages of the line portrayed on the overview screen, an operator is taken to a detailed screen highlighting the equipment involved in that process.

The VTS application features separate screens for precleaning and austenitizing, quenching, cleaning, plating, diffusion and finishing, as well as for alarm, trending, and communications data. These detailed process screens are designed to provide operators with the particulars for the equipment involved in each step of the wire plating process, including such data as furnace temperatures; pump, blower, scrubber, and dryer status; chemical levels; and pH readings. Within each of the plant's PLCs, PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) loops run continuously. An exceptional feature of ATR's VTS application is the implementation of custom PID tags providing dialogs that allow advanced users to easily control the PID loops.

 

 

The PID loop dialog that enables easy control of the PID loops.

Each PID loop dialog displays a generated control variable, and the user-defined setpoint value and measured process value upon which it is based, as a set of three animated bars and corresponding numeric display fields.

Any of the PID loops can be set to auto or manual at the click of a button. When set to manual mode, the PID dialog allows operators to force open and force close the PID controlled valve, and manually enter a setpoint value.

The PID dialogs also feature a button that can be clicked to instantly open a built-in VTS trends page that instantly plots the PID loop data on a graph.

VTS is known for its advanced data logging capabilities with its built-in trends page that enables the plotting of data of any I/O in the system at the click of a button or graphic. The ATR VTS application is no exception. It features custom analog and digital input and output tags that perform automatic data logging. To view this logged data on a graph, an operator need only click the equipment whose data he wishes to plot; VTS immediately launches a linear representation of input data on the Trends page.

 

The built-in Trends page enables the plotting of I/O data at a click.

With the need for reduced downtime and productivity in plant operations, control systems like VTS are becoming more and more critical. VTS meets and exceeds this target, providing operators with expedient and accurate problem determination; rather than a flashing red light on a panel signaling equipment failure, specific alarms are instantly reported, with descriptive text informing operators as to the location and nature of the problem. Visual and auditory cues further enhance the VTS alarm system.

 

The Alarm page reports specific alarms for rapid operator problem determination.

Trihedral Engineering Limited is currently working with ATR to implement monitoring of the second of the three production lines. Monitoring of the third line and the implementation of full PC-based control is scheduled for the near future.

Natalie Shannon is a technical writer and Frank Levy is a senior project engineer at Trihedral Engineering Limited.

Printed in Manufacturing Automation May 2002

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