COMPLETE SCHOOL PROJECT TOPICS & MATERIALS :
CHAPTERS: Chapter 1-5
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CHAPTER ONE:
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the project
Cutix Plc Nnewi, a leading manufacturer of indigenous cables, produces all kinds of cables ranging from house wiring cables to aluminum and copper conductors for high tension installation. Cutix was founded back in 1981, and started actual production in 1984. The company has many production machines which are highly durable and rugged.
A production chart of Cutix Plc Nnewi reveals that a finished product must have passed through the stages of wire drawing, first and second insulation, spark testing and the finishing (coiling and sealing) line. More critical of these is the first and second insulation stages which make use of high temperature to melt polyvinyl chloride (PVC) materials required for coating the cables. Such situation requires a given temperature to be kept stable to ensure smooth and uniform insulation.
Cutix, like most other manufacturing industries, makes use of analog temperature controllers. Such controllers can accept thermocouple or RTD inputs and offer imprecise temperature control over a range such as 75°C to 100°C. This seemed to pose no disadvantage to them since their products still sell in the market. However, this type of controllers used by these industry, unknowingly, possess no readable display, lack of sophistication for more challenging control tasks, and no communication ability, all of which most often expose the industry to the following problems:
• non-uniform heating rate for a point that requires more than one heating element, thus causing delay in start-up of production.
• wastage of raw of materials in test-running the line to ensure that the temperature has reached the minimum required value.
• poor package outlook because the sealers are not heated uniformly.
• extra man-power for each extrusion line- one at the take-off and another at the panel- to ensure that the machine is stopped immediately there is a sign of poor quality due to failure of one or more of the heaters.
• frequent damage of heating elements as a result of no precision in control which often leads to over-heating the elements beyond upper temperature range.
Figure1.1: Production flow chart of Cutix Plc, Nnewi.
In view of the above limitations, and more, a pc-based automatic multi-point temperature monitoring and control is hereby proposed to remove the limitations of analog controllers and even add flexibility to the control process.
Today, with the continuous price erosion and performance increase of pc, industrial control is moving from an expensive, analog proprietary hardware base to one with foundation of pc-based software. Pc-based temperature control runs on personal or industrial hardened computers and provides answers to initiatives for lean control program.
With the inherent advantages of a pc-based control which include flexibility, high performance, customization, convenience, easier development, better integration with existing hard wares, portability and access, the proposed system should be able to help Cutix (and other manufacturing industries) solve their problems by providing uniform heating, precision in measurement and control, self monitoring and extension of usage to remote, inaccessible locations in the manufacturing floor.
1.2 Aims and Objectives
This project “PC-based automatic multipoint temperature monitoring and control” is aimed at designing a temperature monitoring and control device which can be used to monitor and control the temperatures of industrial machines. Thus, the completed work can be viewed as a system having three main features which serve as the objective of the work.
•PC-based temperature monitoring and control.
• Automation facility, which enables the system to be self monitoring.
•Multi-point approach, a feature that makes it possible for more than one point to be monitored.
Hence, this project is meant to offer flexibility to monitoring operations by allowing or providing a PC-interfacing feature which allows an operator to monitor the ongoing process from his PC located at amore convenient and easy-accessible place. It is believed that this project will be able to remove the rigorous activities of monitoring temperatures by personnel, and engage him with other production activities, all aimed at ensuring cheaper and fast product output.
1.3 Significance of the Study
The beginning of a sweeping change is upon the control and instrumentation world with the availability of robust hardware, open technology and real-time, window-based operating system. PC-based control is emerging as a new control paradigm for increasing manufacturing productivity. PC-base automatic multi-point temperature monitoring and control offers open and more intuitive traditional solutions at a lower total system cost and easier migration to future technologies. Easier development, integration, portability, and access, ensure a flexible and efficient solution. Some of the inherent advantages of PC-based automatic multipoint temperature monitoring and control include the following:
•Custom user-interface for supervisory control.
For low-end PID (Proportional Integral-Derivative) controllers to high end programmable logic controllers (PLC) system, visualizing the control application can be very challenging. Many stand-alone controllers have fixed digital displays for configuring control set-points and viewing I/O values. PC-based automatic multipoint temperature controller, being an advanced system, on the other hand, have no display and typically requires a separate software package and human machine interface (HMI) to view and interact with automation systems.
•Easy integration with existing system
One may already have a control system that works well for most needs but could benefit from additional measurement I/O or advanced control functionality to optimize certain specialized tasks. A big advantage to using data acquisition hardware and an open PC platform is the number of options you have for connecting to existing equipment. Whether you are communicating with process instrument, PLC, or single loop controllers, you have a variety of ways to integrate a PC-based control system with existing hardware, this is exactly what a PC-based automatic multipoint temperature monitoring and control does in the case of temperature measurement.
•Software-defined control flexibility.
A PC-based automatic multipoint control system offers you complete flexibility in defining system functionality and I/O operations. In addition, even without prior technical skill in wiring a temperature controller, PC-based automatic multipoint control system enables an operator to carry out initial installation since the system just requires relocating it to another sight without rewiring process [5]. Also such unskilled operator make changes in the initial setting using the window-based control interface.
•Multipoint monitoring and control for performance and reliability.
Beside single point digital temperature controllers which can control only one process, multipoint digital temperature controllers control more than one point, meaning they can accept more than one input variable. Generally speaking a multipoint controller can be thought of as a device with many individual temperature controllers inside one chassis. These are typically mounted behind the panel in some industrial applications, as opposed to the front-to-panel (FTP) [9]. Multipoint temperature controllers provide a compact more modular system that operates either within a stand alone system or in a PLC environment. They provide a single point of software to access all control loops.
•Enhanced security
PC-based automatic multipoint temperature monitoring and control systems also have enhanced security such as not having buttons for a person to use and change critical settings. By having complete control over the information being read from or written to the multipoint controller, the machine builder can limit the information that any given operator can read or change, preventing undesirable conditions from occurring, such as setting a set point too high to a range that may damage products or the machine.
Today, manufacturers around the world look to PC to play a bigger role in their control systems. PCs are already an accepted platform for supervisory control, monitoring and reporting, as well as off-line data management and analysis. Manufacturers have already realized the flexibility of the PC and the easy-to-use open architecture of window-base software applications for manufacturing environment.
Following the trend, PC-based automatic multipoint temperature monitoring and control has emerged to facilitate efficient monitoring and control process for manufacturing industries. Such temperature controllers are used in a wide variety of industries to manage manufacturing processes or operations. Some common applications include the following.
•Heat Treat/ Oven
Temperature controllers are used in ovens and in heat treating applications within furnace, ceramic kilns, boilers and heat exchangers.
•Packaging
Temperature controllers must maintain a uniform level at designated temperatures and process time length. This helps to ensure a high quality product output.
•Plastics
Temperature control in the plastic industry is common on portable chillers, hoppers and dryers, and molding and extruding equipment, temperature controllers are mused to precisely monitor and control temperatures at different critical points in the production of plastics.
•Health care
Temperature control is required in laboratory and test equipment, autoclaves, incubators, refrigeration equipment and crystallization growing chambers and test chambers where specimens must be kept or test must be run within specific temperature parameters.
•Food and beverage
Common food processing applications involving temperature control include brewing, blending, sterilization and cooking and baking ovens. Controllers regulate and/or process time to ensure optimum performance.
•Cable manufacturing
Insulation materials require a specific temperature which must be maintained uniformly throughout the barrel and nozzle zones to ensure good quality of product. Efficient temperature monitoring and control systems are required to achieve this.
Finally the steps taken to incorporate PC to temperature monitoring and control is one of the many steps required for a complete computer automation of industrial processes. Thus other parameters, such as pressure, colour, texture and so on, can be computerized, providing a platform for a unified process control.
1.4 Scope of the work
This work covers the following areas.
•Temperature measurement
Temperature sensors are reviewed and choice made on the most applicable sensors. The sensor measures the temperature of the points and converts the reading to a voltage value. This value is then sent to the microcontroller which compares it with the set-point value, takes appropriate action in order to restore tolerable limits.
•Hardware programming.
High level C-programming language is used to develop codes for the microcontroller to enable it read the values sent by the sensors and take appropriate actions. The Visual Basic Window-based software will be used to communicate with the PC operating system and the C program running on the hardware in order to read the user set-point values and current temperatures.
•Window-based software programming.
Communication between the hardware and the PC (serial communication) is facilitated by programming the PC to be able to communicate with the serial port. The Visual Basic Window-based software will be used to communicate with the PC operating system and the C program running on the hardware in order to read the user set-point values and current temperatures.
•Level conversion