Choosing the most effective controller requires careful evaluation of multiple requirements. Jeff Payne, Automation Controls Group Product Manager at AutomationDirect, wrote an article appearing in the August 2018 issue of Applied Automation titled How to Choose an Industrial Automation Controller. There are many important items to consider when choosing a controller for machine and process…
In 1976, there were many firsts – the Concorde flew its first commercial supersonic flight, Nadia Comãneci scored the first ever perfect score in gymnastics, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak formed Apple Computers. That same year, a company called Metrol Co., Ltd. was founded in Tokyo, Japan. Metrol products may not be as familiar…
Early civilizations used an arm’s length, the width of a palm or the number of seeds in a container to build buildings and trade items in a local marketplace. In today’s world, measuring liquids, solids, and even atomic particles has become an exact science. For day-to-day operations, manufacturers need to measure and maintain materials at…
Jim Krebs, technical marketing engineer at AutomationDirect, wrote an article in Processing magazine’s July 2018 issue titled Specifying Thermal Management Systems for Control Enclosures Most automation and electrical devices must be housed in a control enclosure when used in industrial environments. This includes controllers, drives, power supplies, disconnects, fuses, terminals, relays, contactors and more. Krebs…
Jerry Reaves, PLC silo product manager at AutomationDirect, wrote an article for the July 2018 issue of Control Engineering titled Comparing ladder logic and object oriented programming In the article, he discussed how many young automation professionals are comfortable with object oriented programming (OOP), but Reaves says ladder logic remains the standard for industrial automation applications:…
In “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy worried about lions, tigers, and bears as she began her journey. While those animals certainly can be frightening, in our automated world, safety concerns are different. Doors, gates, and machines can pose hazards to people and property if they don’t work properly: garage doors should stop if something is…
Ethernet is the most widely used network in industrial plants and facilities, here’s a primer covering its foundational concepts. By: Bill Dehner, AutomationDirect Ethernet was first conceived and deployed in a research setting in the 1970s and was soon standardized in the early 1980s under IEEE 802.3. This quickly led to commercial adoption in office…
Gary H. Lucas, Director of Innovation at Innovative Treatment Products, wrote an article that ran in the July 2018 issue of Control Design magazine titled Wastewater Treatment Plants Can Be Built for Small-Scale Applications. Any facility too isolated to connect to a larger sewer system—such as a school, office or retailer—will have to supply its…
The journey from theory to reality can be fraught with the unexpected and not as clear-cut as it seems on paper. Even the most direct path from concept to completion can have external influences, that might seem irrelevant at the time or might not be known at all, which can cause undesirable results in the…
Wow! Our recent CLICK/C-more giveaway had an overwhelming response with over 200 entries and many, many great applications. It was nearly impossible to narrow the field to one winner – so we didn’t. We decided to choose two lucky winners along with our top ten favorites. The two Grand Prize winners received a CLICK of…