Initailly I want to use PC to control temperature in an electric furnace up to 1600 deg F and log the temperature data.

A few requirements for the temperature controller.

- 5 sec max temp scans for control out of tolerance conditions and visual monitoring (dont think that should be too hard)
- Audible alarm for out of tolerance conditions
- External light indicator for out of tolerance conditions
- External light indicator for warning limit conditions
- Ability to regain control, after shut down due to out of tolerance condition without having to cool specimen down a few hundred degrees. (Current control software requires this if you dont want to wait a few hours for it to figure out where it is)
- Ability to have separate PID’s for each temperature. (all tests have one temp for the entire test but different tests require different temps)
- Automatic PID tuning.

P.S. I am not an engineer or programmer but have been working with temperature controllers for 16 years.

Let me know if you need more info.

Any help would be appreciated.

Todd

 

We do thermal processing in one area of the plant with tasks almost identical to what you describe, with Honeywell UDC single loop controllers, some paperless recorders, and in a couple instances with low-end HMI supervisory software package like SpecView, for recipe handling.

But, then again, it's a business, so we can't spend time re-inventing what vendors already offer in commercial, easy-to-use packages that are, quite frankly, very well designed for tasks like these.

PCs are great for many things, but we let controllers (whether loop or PLC) do control.

But, I'm sure you'll hear from others that have tackled temperature control with a PC.

Bud

 

We supply a PC-based autotune PID temperature controller which will meet all your requirements. It has been used mainly for plastic extruders for the past 5 years. It can handle 128 seperate loops at 250 mS update rate. It can connect to any PLC brand or I/O modules via OPC.

You can download a free evaluation from our website.

Hope this helps.

Warren
http://www.pc-pid.com
"the PC-based Controller people"

 

You might want to take a look at pCon:

http://www.pc-pid.com

They have a PC based temperature controller that I think will do everything you need. We use it on our extruders.

They also have a demo and simulator that you can download and evaluate.

A lot of engineers are anti-PC but we have been using it for a year and never had any problems with it.

Joe

 

We supply a PC-based autotune PID temperature controller which will meet your requirements. It has been used mainly for plastic extruders for the past 5 years. It can handle 128 seperate loops at 250 mS update rate. It can connect to any PLC brand or I/O modules via OPC.

You can download a free evaluation from our website.

Hope this helps.

Warren
http://www.pc-pid.com
"the PC-based Controller people"