Issue 7 – 2006

You Get What You Pay For  A popular story within the cruise line industry relates that on April 12, 1912, a British citizen, Mr. Ralph Henderson, successfully argued that he shouldn’t have to pay the full rate for his outside cabin on his cruise ship. Henderson pointed out that the ship was new and its…

AutomationDirect’s Technical Support Team has compiled a list of customer frequently asked questions for many of our products. The complete listing can be found on the technical support page of our Web site. Here are some of the more commonly asked questions regarding our sensors. 1. Q: How do inductive proximity sensors work? A: Inductive proximity…

The glossary below is an excerpt from Jon Stenerson’s “Fundamentals of Programmable Logic Controllers, Sensors, and Communications”. For the complete list, go to the Technical Support section of the AutomationDirect Web site. Common Automation Terms • Accumulated value: Applies to the use of timers and counters. The accumulated value is the present count or time. • Accuracy: The…

Because of certain drawbacks of physical contact style sensors and switches such as limit switches and float switches, newer technology non-contact style sensors have become prevalent in industry, performing well in many applications. Proximity, photoelectric and ultrasonic sensors can be used in many applications for which they were previously never considered. These non-contact sensors are…

As most everyone is aware, from a business standpoint, we live in a numbers-based society. In all businesses, whether a small company with a dozen employees or a large conglomerate of thousands, the focus is on the bottom line. Executives are scrutinizing annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily reports to determine how productivity is…

In our last issue of Automation Notebook we introduced you to DirectSOFT5 (version 5.0), the latest version of programming software available for the DirectLOGIC PLCs. DirectSOFT5 received an overall facelift including selectable themes, configurable toolbars, dockable and floatable views, HTML help files, and a helpful “Tip of the Day” feature. However, the most notable improvement to the software…

MAPI Reports Solid Manufacturing Growth In 2006, Predicts Slightly Slower In 2007 According to a recent press release from MAPI, a leading executive development and business research organization, solid growth for the manufacturing sector in 2006 will likely be followed by some deceleration in 2007. According to the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI Quarterly Industrial Outlook (ER-607e), first…

Imagine a world where kids put engineers and scientists on the same pedestal as rock stars, athletes and actors… Imagine a world where ordinary people do extra-ordinary things and are recognized for their achievements… Imagine a world where being gracious, professional and cooperative are held in the highest regard… Imagine a world where academics are taken from the classroom…

On The Path To Deliver Pervasive Enterprise Efficiency With RFID tagging becoming more common, this article explores how industry is just beginning to climb the ladder of exciting uses and benefits for RFID in the enterprise. RFID tagging in the enterprise has grown increasingly prevalent over the last two years with the endorsement by Wal-Mart…

AutomationDirect now offers the H4-ECOM100 Ethernet communication module for DirectLOGIC DL405 PLCs. The H4-ECOM100 can be inserted into any I/O slot of any local DL405 base, including expansion bases when using the DL450 CPU and -1 bases, to implement master/slave Ethernet communication at 10 or 100 Mbit data rates. The module supports the industry standard Modbus TCP…

Is there any doubt we live in an oil-based economy? With so much ongoing discussion about the price of oil, increasing refinery costs and concerns of availability going forward, this is one subject that has been discussed at some length. In fact, it is hard to tune out even if one grows tired of hearing…