CIE Components in Electronics
Invensys Eurotherm, a supplier of measurement and instrumentation for process and machine control applications, has launched a family of new precision PLC products aimed at significantly increasing the profitability and efficiency of Heat Treatment and Thermal Processing. The new E+PLC combines precision measurement and control, secure data recording, and a variety of visualisation solutions.
Previously in order to obtain optimum performance and meet accurate pyrometry specifications (eg. AMS2750E), companies had to buy separate products for temperature control, data recording and visualisation. Combining all these products into one flexible and highly functioning precision PLC platform simplifies commissioning and reduces engineering time. The E+PLC also targets operational efficiency and makes regulatory compliance much easier.
Tim Linnell, Product Portfolio Manager at Invensys Eurotherm believes the E+PLC’s versatile functionality will have a significant impact on manufacturing industry, helping to address the demanding challenges of modern processing needs.
According to Linnell “For many companies, in an increasingly competitive global environment, the efficiency of thermal treatments will be the difference between being profitable and not. Eurotherm’s unique fast reacting PID control minimises overshoot, improving accuracy and reducing waste.
“The high precision temperature control ensures the correct temperature is obtained quicker and stays at the optimum level required without deviation, ensuring high quality results first time without wasting time waiting for operating temperature to be reached. This increases throughput of a furnace or thermal treating machine in comparison with traditional PLC based control. Fast acting PID with overshoot inhibition can enable an extra furnace batch cycle to be completed within any 24 hour period. By eliminating damping of PID sets and relying on Eurotherm’s unique overshoot inhibition customers can heat aggressively up to temperature with the confidence of keeping within the required setpoint temperature tolerances.
“These benefits are easily realised in the E+PLC using standard software building blocks, with an auto-tuning function to match the control response to a particular application. This can reduce the time needed to programme and commission an application from days (and sometimes weeks) to hours.
“The E+PLC range also includes secure data logging designed to meet the requirements of thermal treatment standards such as CQI-9 and AMS2750 E. Indeed, Eurotherm has built its business over many years around the requirements of such standards, and is trusted by auditors and customers alike. Of course data logging is only one part of standards compliance, and our highly stable precision measurement circuitry assures compliance with accuracy specifications, aids conformance to System Accuracy Tests (SAT) and improves the output from Temperature Uniformity Surveys (TUS).”
Linnell continues, “Data recording and temperature control is highly specialised and Eurotherm has a track record gained over 50 years in developing these products, building a peerless reputation with the leading businesses in the thermal treatment sector. Eurotherm operate also in some of the most stringently regulated industry sectors in the world, including the global pharmaceutical and biotech industries where our products and secure data recording infrastructure are trusted implicitly.
“Combining Eurotherm’s best of breed products and adding visualisation tools into this new self-contained precision E+PLC platform brings high efficiencies and reduced engineering time.”
