Control System World

The new EP1816-3008 EtherCAT Box from Beckhoff has two integrated 3-axis acceleration sensors and 16 digital inputs. The easy-to-install I/O module for harsh environments can be used to implement cost-effective vibration and shock/oscillation monitoring directly in the field. The machine-mountable device also enables tilt monitoring in longitudinal and transverse direction.

The IP 67-rated EP1816-3008 EtherCAT Box features two integrated 3-axis, 16-bit acceleration sensors with resolution options of ±2 g, ±4 g, ±8 g and ±16 g. The sampling frequency is 1 Hz to 5 kHz. These so-called MEMS (micro-electronic mechanical systems) are based on forked silicon structures, which have movements or vibrations that result in a capacitive change and a corresponding signal value.

The compact and robust EtherCAT Box supports acceleration and angle measurement directly in the field. In addition, the signals are directly available in the control system. Compared with the conventional combination of sensor and separate data sampling, this solution is more cost-effective and easier to install and integrate. Furthermore, it offers another advantage: two sensors, which are arranged at 90° angles, make the EP1816-3008 a redundant measuring system, and in addition, the results can be reliably verified by the controller.

A typical application for the 3-axis acceleration box is vibration and shock/oscillation monitoring of machines and buildings. For example, vibrations of robot arms can be monitored exactly and with no great effort via the measured accelerations. For wood sawing machines, an EP1816-3008 mounted on the work table enables reliable monitoring of the saw-blade angle adjustment through fast signal acquisition.

The International Society of Automation (ISA) announces Peggie W. Koon, Ph.D., as its 2014 President. In this position, Dr. Koon will work with Society leaders and staff to increase awareness of the value and relevance of the ISA brand and build on ISA’s proven range of capabilities and resources for automation professionals, which includes standards development, education, training, certification, publications, and technical symposia and conferences.

Dr. Koon is vice president of Audience at Chronicle Media and The Augusta Chronicle, which are part of Morris Publishing Group, LLC, a privately held media company based in Augusta, Georgia, USA.

“I am extremely honored to serve as 2014 President of ISA, an organization which has contributed so much to both my professional and personal growth,” says Dr. Koon. “This is an exciting time for ISA; the Society is well positioned to secure new opportunities amid a highly changing world economy and global automation community.

“New and emerging technologies not only have facilitated the ability to offer automation solutions around the world, but have also changed many of the roles, responsibilities and needs of the automation professional,” she indicates. “ISA is committed to staying on the leading edge of these technological advances and global changes—to be a critical enabler—both for automation professionals to meet professional requirements and achieve career goals, and for manufacturers and other industry organizations to improve operational reliability, profitability, safety and security.”

Dr. Koon assumed her first leadership position (Membership Chair of ISA’s Management Division) within ISA in 1996. Since that time, she has held a variety of prominent roles in the Society, including:

• Director, ISA Management Division

• Vice President, ISA Industries & Sciences Department

• Vice Chair, ISA Board of Department Vice Presidents

• Society-level Committee Member, ISA Finance and Conference & Exhibit Global Oversight

• Society-level Committee Member, Honors & Awards

• ISA Executive Board and Executive Committee Member

Dr. Koon’s media career began in 2006 at Morris Digital Works (MDW), where she worked on strategic audience and revenue initiatives. She became deputy chief operating officer of the delivery division for MDW and also served as the corporate director of strategy, partnership development and management for Morris Communications and Morris Publishing Group.

Prior to joining Morris, Dr. Koon spent more than 25 years leading the development of IT systems for process automation and process control in a variety of industries--automotive, nuclear defense, aerospace, nuclear reprocessing, thermal ceramics and textiles.

Dr. Koon earned a bachelor of arts in mathematics from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA. She completed graduate studies in industrial and systems engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia and received a doctorate degree in management information systems from Kennedy Western University in Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA.

Reuters: Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (ORPIC) and Spanish company Compania Logistica de Hidrocarburos, have launched a joint venture to build a 280km pipeline project.

"This is a significant project on a number of levels," said Musab al- Mahrouqi, ORPIC CEO.

"As a multi-product pipeline it is a first for Oman, a complex transportation system that will have a positive impact for the business overall and specifically in environmental issues."

The Orpic Logistics Company (OLC) has been established to construct the Muscat-Sohar Product Pipeline (MSPP) which also includes a terminal and a direct pipeline link from Jifnain to Musc at International Airport. A total of $200m will be invested in the project. MSPP will be one of three major projects to be started - the others being the Sohar Refinery Improvement Project and the Liwa Plastics Project, a statement carried by Oman Press Agency said.

"The Jifnain terminal is a strategic storage facility, capable of responding to emergency situations should it be necessary. And the direct link to the new airport will mean that aircraft will be refuelled through a closed system, guaranteeing a continuous flow 24 hours a day, rather than having to use fuel tankers.

"We strongly believe that this project is strategically important for Oman."

The pipeline will transport four types of fuel, premium and regular gasoline, diesel and jet A1 for aircraft, using a computer controlled buffering system to separate product streams.

ICONICS has a base of over 45,000 systems installed worldwide today in Building Automation and Energy Management projects. These include some of the largest building and real estate portfolios in the world, including the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., London's Heathrow Airport, several Microsoft campuses, and a large number of others.

The company’s growth is driven by its cutting edge technology leadership and a focus on open software solutions. ICONICS' solutions are based on industry standards such as BACnet, OPC UA, SNMP, Modbus and Web services. The company has been certified by the BACnet Testing Laboratory (BTL) to the highest level of BACnet compliance, the B-AWS profile. This guarantees seamless interoperability and operation with a wide variety of new or existing BMS systems and products that interface directly with energy meters and electrical monitoring systems.

“The market demand for our automation and analytics software continues to exceed our expectations. We need software/system savvy partners that can install, configure and service our solutions, to meet this demand” states, Gary Kohrt, VP of Solutions and Services.

ICONICS is seeking Building System Integrators and Energy Service providers with the ability to manage large automation and energy improvement projects. Our preference is for partners that have strong system engineering skills and, preferably, multiple Microsoft Technical Certifications.

The PPC-6150A and PPC-6170A are 15” and 17” panel PCs designed to give customers greater control in a smaller footprint. Previously customers needed to have four units (camera, IPC, HMI and monitor) with the PPC all-in-one solution for machine inspection this is reduced to just two (camera and PPC) and provides powerful computing capabilities with the intuitiveness of a panel PC that can be installed in many ways the PPC can be installed in a wide array of configurations to fit any production line.

With a high performance Intel 3rd generation Core i5 processor and extra four GbE LAN ports (giving a total of six) the PPC-6150A and PPC-6170A have been designed to be the best fit for machine vision inspection.

The other key selling point of these new PPC models is that they contain dual expansion slots, dual hard disk drives with RAID 0/1 and a wide range of I/O ports including: six GbE ports, one isolated RS-232/422/485 port, one GPIO/RS-232, three USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 ports. This large number of ports enables users to connect a wide array of devices and quickly process the information.

The HCS HART Concentrator System converts a HART digital signal to a serial (RS-485 or RS-232) MODBUS RTU communication protocol. This allows HART transmitters and valves to interface directly with MODBUS-based monitoring and control systems.

Operates in Point-to-Point and Digital Multidrop HART Networks:

In point-to-point HART mode, the HCS is set to monitor a single instrument. All process and diagnostic data carried on the HART data string is converted to MODBUS RTU.

Up to 16 HART Devices Per HCS. In a digital multidrop HART network, up to 16 HART instruments digitally communicate on the same wires. The HCS can be set to monitor any or all instruments and/ or valves within the network. Only one MODBUS address, and one communication link (such as twisted wire pair), is needed to send the process and diagnostic data from up to 16 HART devices to a MODBUS host.

Product Data Sheet

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The International Society of Automation (ISA) announced today that the FDT Group, an independent, not-for-profit association of international companies active in process and factory automation, is an ISA Promotional Partner.

This new relationship extends previous efforts between the two organizations. FDT Technology, which is also known as IEC 62453, ANSI/ISA103 and China GB/T 29618, began ISA committee activities in 2006 with approval of the ISA 103 standard by the ISA membership in 2011. As an ISA Promotional Partner, the FDT Group will provide the ISA community access to device maintenance and management strategies through a range of ISA media and direct marketing opportunities.

The primary objective of the FDT Group is to provide an open, non- proprietary interface for integrating networks and field devices with engineering, automation and asset management systems. FDT Technology, with its well-known Device Type Managers (DTMs), enable field devices to be configured, operated and maintained through the standardized user interface—regardless of supplier, device type or communication protocol.

“ISA welcomes the FDT Group as an ISA Promotional Partner,” states Jennifer Infantino, ISA’s Manager of Marketing, Communications, and Corporate Partnerships. “ISA members and the automation and control community at large will be able to learn more about the value and benefits of FDT Technology. It is part of our mission to share resources and information that have the potential to positively impact productivity and the profitability of industry.”

Shannon Foos, Director of Marketing for FDT North America, adds, “Our goal with the promotional partnership is to keep the automation and control community current with network and device integration strategies. We will build upon our standards-setting collaboration with ISA to focus on sharing best practices that can help the automation community streamline device and network management efforts. FDT’s universal platform for standardizing the communication and configuration interface between all field devices and host systems has broad applicability across brownfield and greenfield applications in the process, hybrid and discrete industries. The diverse ISA community is ideal for discussing the broad applicability of FDT Technology.”

ISA’s Corporate Partnerships Program offers companies customized packages, combining ISA products and services with marketing opportunities across all channels, and providing a streamlined approach to corporate sponsorship.

Collaboration with the FDT Group will include webinars, web-based articles and podcasts promoted through ISA’s social media channels, topic-focused email blasts and the posting of whitepapers in the online version of ISA’s InTech magazine.

Manufacturers and equipment builders are looking to simplify their machine architectures and reduce the system footprints. With the release of the Allen-Bradley Armor GuardLogix programmable automation controller (PAC), Rockwell Automation now provides users with a high-performance, multidisciplined control in a controller that can be installed directly on-machine.

The Armor GuardLogix PAC joins a growing portfolio of On-Machine solutions from Rockwell Automation that move the industrial controls and hardware closer to the application or onto the machine, minimizing the number of components in the cabinet. This reduces wiring time while helping increase uptime as maintenance and repair is made faster with pre-configured, quick connect systems and simplified wiring layouts.

The Armor GuardLogix PAC is IP67, SIL 3, PL(e), CAT 4 rated with 4 MB of application code storage space with two full-featured EtherNet/IP device-level ring (DLR) capable connections.

“With this controller, manufacturers can tap the power of our information-enabled Integrated Architecture system in a simple-to-use, but fully loaded on-machine controller,” said Geoff Sieron, product manager, GuardLogix controllers, Rockwell Automation. “Additionally, as manufacturing control systems evolve, our customers are replacing aging equipment with simplified systems. Quick-connect cabling greatly streamlines system wiring so the system is easier to install, troubleshoot and maintain. This can be especially crucial to machine and equipment builders looking to improve time-to-market, testing and commissioning.”

The Armor GuardLogix PAC provides access to the controller-mode switch, USB port, secure digital (SD) card and power-supply switch, along with 24V DC power pass-through to supply power to other On‑Machine products. This feature allows power to be routed from one machine device or module to another, eliminating the need for a power supply for each device and simplifying the overall system architecture. Innovative mounting tabs can be rotated vertically or horizontally, giving users flexibility on where and how the product can be mounted. The controller is programmed in the Rockwell Software Studio 5000 design and engineering environment.

On-Machine solutions

GuardLogix controllers