Control and monitoring system prototype for pulse plasma sintering process
Cubic boron nitride is commonly used as a cutting tools material for the sake of its high hardness and wear-resistance. Pulse Plasma Sintering was proposed to decrease the production costs. This method is very attractive for industry, because it significantly decreases the costs of production. The goal of this paper is to present the control system prototype for Pulse Plasma Sintering processes based on programmable logic controller. Only sintering process with carefully controlled parameters allows to restrict the transformation of cBN into hBN and guarantee production of high-quality cubic boron nitride samples. Thus a dedicated control system was developed to control parameters and therefore to improve the production process. This paper presents also a visualisation system which allows the operator to control, monitor and analyze the production process. Prepared application consists of manual and auto operating mode.
A generic procedure for troubleshooting of PLC based control systems
This paper describes the problems generally faced with PLC based control systems and a general procedure to solve them. Flowcharts for troubleshooting of power supply faults, internal and external problems of PLC has been included in the paper. The approach mentioned for troubleshooting is general and can be applied on any type of PLC based control system. A case study is included to validate the developed general procedure for the trouble shooting of PLC based controlled system.
Pulse Plasma Sintering of Nano-Crystalline Cu Powder
Nanocrystalline copper powders, produced by the reduction of the CuO with hydrogen, were consolidated using the pulse plasma sintering (PPS) method. The sintering process was carried out at temperatures between 500 and 900 oC under a load of 60 MPa for 5 min. The average crystallite size of the sintered component obtained at 500 oC was about 80nm and at 900 oC 1880 nm. The components produced at 500 oC had a relative density of 90 %, and those sintered at 900 oC 92 %; their hardness was 215 and 140 HV0.1, respectively.