Hold the front page: PCs oust PLCs in the press
Captec has supplied one of the UK's leading newspaper publishers with "shoebox" industrial PCs, replacing legacy PLC cards resulting in more efficient live monitoring and production reporting.
For decades, manufacturers and engineers have had to rely on PLC (programmable logic controller) cards to control and monitor a range of systems and applications.
Now Captec, the market leading supplier of innovative and bespoke industrial PCs, has supplied one of the UK's leading newspaper publishers with "shoebox" industrial PCs, replacing the legacy PLC cards resulting in quicker, more efficient live monitoring and newspaper production reporting.
As one of the UK's leading newspaper publishers, producing many different and varying titles, quality, efficiency and reliability are paramount to them on a daily basis.
The company was looking for a way to make its process control more efficient, across a number of printing plants in the UK, with the replacement of PLCs the chosen route.
Captec provided the platform to control and collect data more quickly, from the start of production to finish, using a network of industrial PCs.
The data the units gather are then transmitted in real time to the central monitoring and reporting servers using the TCP/IP protocol.
The small footprint of these compact computer systems facilitates their housing in air filtered cabinets, a significant advantage as printing presses produce dust in high volumes.
They are designed with maintainability in mind, with highly accessible and replaceable components.
A further advantage is that the PCs have much more processing power and a greater range of functions than the now outdated PLCs.
Today, the publishing company is achieving higher levels of production and efficiency, with fewer delays due to their industrial computing platforms pinpointing any errors, and helping to keep the press printing.
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