See how a water utility standardized around AutomationDirect products to improve operations while saving time and money. A team of operations, maintenance, and engineering personnel at Helix Water District in San Diego, CA has retrofitted and constructed many sites using automation hardware and best practices based on AutomationDirect products. David Reagan wrote an article with…
One of the most common types of control components seen in the food and beverage industry are discrete sensors. Discrete applications in the food and beverage industry are processes or operations that perform a series of predetermined steps and typically use devices whose operation is either “On” or “Off”; examples include sensors that detect the…
The Food and Beverage industry is a growing and changing field that’s becoming more and more reliant on automation and finding efficiencies. Click below to download our Food and Beverage book to see all of the latest trends. Topics Include:
By Bill Dehner, Technical Marketer, AutomationDirect One of the most talked about new trends in industrial automation is the use of single-board microcontrollers. These controllers, along with their open-sourced programs, have begun to show up in industrial applications. Many up-and-comers, introduced to this type of control early on, are fueling this trend but if you come…
A key AutomationDirect value is to be a responsible, involved citizen of the communities where team members live and work. That’s one of the reasons the company has served for the past two years as an employer for Internship Forsyth which gives students the opportunity to learn real-world skills by working at local companies. The…
For the ninth year in a row, Automation World readers have voted for their “First Team” suppliers in PMMI Media Group’s 2020 Leadership in Automation program. This year, AutomationDirect made “First Team” in the following categories: HMI Hardware HMI Software PLCs/PACs First Team Honoree Automation World, a leading business magazine serving automation professionals, asks their…
The newest PLCs can communicate directly with internet websites, creating new automation possibilities. By Eric Witcher, AutomationDirect The July 2019 issue of Control Engineering magazine featured a cover story describing how modern industrial controllers are now able to interact directly with internet resources. Titled Benefits of Connecting a PLC to the Internet, this article shows…
Automated Integration replaced many relays, an old PLC and what seemed like miles of wire when it upgraded the control and safety system on the Hurricane roller coaster in New Mexico. By Manny Salazar, Manager, Automated Integration, LLC. The Hurricane roller coaster was purchased from the Santa Cruz Boardwalk in California, where it was originally…
Planning the details and remembering the small stuff pays off when designing a pneumatic system. Kevin Kakascik, Technical Marketing Engineer at AutomationDirect, wrote an article for the January 2020 issue of Design World titled How to Build a Pneumatics Bill of Material. Here’s a summary, click on the link above for the full text. Maybe…
A student design team developed a PLC-based control system to safely automate a test stand and prove out an engine prior to rocket launch. By Simon Bambey and Griffin Peirce, UBC Rocket Student Team At the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada, a group of determined students faced a technical task more challenging…