Controllers turn to temperature monitoring

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Dec 20, 2004

The new Daqstation CXl000/CX2000 Style 3 incorporate a number of new features that make them ideally suited to temperature monitoring and control in furnaces and small-scale processes.

The new Daqstation CXl000/CX2000 Style 3 from Yokogawa UK are upgrades of the Daqstation CX Series low-cost control and measurement systems incorporating a number of new features that make them ideally suited to temperature monitoring and control in furnaces and small-scale processes.

Like the earlier versions, the new products integrate a paperless recording function with a control function, and also incorporate an Ethernet interface as a standard networking feature.

New features include support for running up to six individual control profiles, incorporation of a measured/setting value calculation function, and the addition of a logic calculation function.

Individual pattern control is supported for six internal loops, so that a single station can monitor and control the temperature of multiple furnaces, each running their own temperature profile and operating independently of one another.

This simplifies the overall system configuration and reduces cost.

To support applications that are difficult to handle with one controller and to accommodate a wider range of applications, a function is added that calculates measured values and preset values in the feedback controls.

This supports, for example, a special application in which a furnace's average temperature value is used as the measured value for the furnace's feedback control.

This can also be used for complicated applications such as carburisation furnaces where temperature is controlled at the same time that the amount of carbon in the furnace is calculated.

The logic calculation function allows users to monitor external signals or measured values and specify which operations are carried out by controllers in the event of an abnormal situation or the generation of an alarm.

For example, to improve safety, an interlocking mechanism can be provided that switches off a heater if the temperature exceeds a certain level.

The new units are ideally suited to use in systems such as heat-treating furnaces, drying ovens and food sterilisers, where they offer benefits over the use of alternative methods such as separate recorders and temperature controllers or PLC-based supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) systems.

One of the main advantages of these control and measurement stations is their cost effectiveness, since users are easily able to carry out control and measurement functions with a single unit.

There is no need for users to create monitoring windows or to program data acquisition software, which reduces the cost of building and installing a typical system to half that of a measurement system that uses a PLC/Scada combination.

A further key strength of these units is their powerful networking capability, a feature that will provide ever-greater benefits to users as the need for network compatibility is expected to increase at a growing rate.