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.
Economics of General-Purpose Assembly Robots
Summary A study of the comparative economics of various automatic assembly systems using general-purpose assembly robots is described. In the study, use is made of a “typical” candidate assembly whose profile is obtained from statistical analysis of actual products submitted by interested companies. It is shown that the choice of assembly system and the various parts presentation methods depends on three main factors, namely: the annual production volume per shift, the number of parts in the product and the equipment payback period.