Great lecture about history of industrial mechanisms and circuits. The topic does not directly related to my curent work, but it has very good concept of general understanding in automated control flows.
Very good seminar, I can relate directly. My formal back ground has be electronics but over the years I have found that I needed to understand other disiplines such as mechanical and flow mechanics in the performance of my daily tasks. Like the previous post while starting in my first postion in 1969 where I worked for a small electronics company building telephone switching equipment and having to build specialized equipment to automate manufacturing processes. I have been lucky to have worked in manufacturing then test engineering, product engineers, design engineering and R&D. My initall experince in manufactuing processes definately helped make me a better engineer and develop better products.
I have worked in automated manufacturing since 1968 -- where indeed we did use mini computers and the original versions of "micro processors" to automate manufacturing processes. Of course initially I was in computer manufacturing where we did indeed "eat our own dog food".
For many of us the process was integrated from design through manufacturing and automation was present at most steps -- if not all.
Good introduction and enjoyable presentation. It took 2 or 3 slides to 'calibrate' to the King's English. Good history lessons too and important in establishing a solid foundation, so many have come before us, we stand on the shoulders of giants. My favorite Clive is Clive Staples Lewis so 'Max' it is. Jolly good show!
The explanation give for an Embedded SBC has great similarity in concept to Embedded software. This SW is often so transparen to the user of a device that he is unaware that there is any SW involved in the sensor, valve or whatever.
OK Everyone -- I'm afraid we have run over the hour .... I will look through all of these questions and maybe we will find time to answer some more of them tomorrow. I do hope that you will be coming back and that I'll "see" you then...
Someone asked "Max, can we use C or C+ for programming the PLCs?" I'm not sure about C (although I woudl expect so), but these days you can Program PLCs using older techniques like ladder logic or more modern forms including BASIC and C
Controling process = monitoring comparing to limits / algorythms decide of action needed > send commands to final elements / power actuators / motors / valves etc. It was my Old Instructor intro 20 years ago. Maybe there were used other words.
Someone asked "Do Altera design FPGAs that are programable?" The idea is that all FPGAs are programmable. There are different underlying technologies. Some are based on antifuses and thes eare one-time programmable (OTP). Others are based on SRAM and they can be programmed and reprogrammed as many times as you wish...
Three Phase control is done by the mucroprocessors/embedded systems. The core driver for the motor will be something like a tyristor based amplifier or chopper circuit (a mix of analog components and digital swtching gear).
Max, can you show a sample or two of a "ladder logic" possibly in a future persentation? I think a picture may be worth a thousand words here. I'm wondering if this is something like some of the abrieviated schematics for relay controls I've seen in the past.
Re my definition of industrial control -- I think I said something like "In its most general sense – a control system is a device or set of devices that are used to manage, command, direct, or regulate the behavior of other devices, processes, or systems"
@Max: Slide 10 - Do you have a rule-of-thumb from which evolutionary step to pick a solution to a problem? E.g. how far would you go "mechanical" before employing "relays"
Re the question "Which type of Microcontroller is more reliable for electrical three phase speed control?" Eeek, that's a bit specific ... I think we would really need to talk to someone in the field about this...
I teach electromechanical controls and that was the gospel. It is still not understood very well by the masses and the far reaching application of controls in the world today.
Part of the "equation" is how many systems are you going to create? ASICs are cost effective if you are going to deploy millions of products using them ... FPGAs are cost effective if you are thinking of only tens of thousands of units...
slide 9: A few weeks ago I had to quickly hack some glue code together to log output from a few sensors into something that SAP at the very top could refer to later on. Quality control, they said...
Q. Is there a comensurate hierarchy of control algorithms low level through to supervisory control ( diagram indicating different levels/facets of control) ?
Someone asked about the relative costs of developoing an FPGA to an ASIC. A modern ASIC can cost 10s of millions of dollars to develop -- an FPGA is much cheaper....
@cmeadows6959 - ladder charts and flow charts seem to be the same basic item..???
You can think of it this way, but more accurately would be that ladder charts are schematics. I hope that helps, considering this response is not a complete tutorial.
Elevator control is focused on far more than just getting people to a floor - Energy use minimization through scheduling and positioning are an important part of the programming
Is there a comensurate hierarchy of control algorithms low level through to supervisory control ( diagram indicating different levels/facets of control) ?
missing finger parts... I remember getting lessons about taking off the wedding ring before working. A lot of guys missing the same ring finger at the time.
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