Fast Forward
You can find more information on our web, so please take a look.
By Chip McDaniel
Faced with ever-increasing cost pressures and demands for improved performance, machine builders are actively seeking new automation solutions with improved cost/performance ratios. In response to these demands, vendors must often incorporate commercial off-the-shelf components and other technologies to deliver more performance at lower costs in smaller form factors.
This article shows how machine builders and vendors can work together to deliver the automation systems demanded, and how to successfully integrate the multiple power and control subsystems and components.
A machine's automation system primarily consists of power and control components. For a smaller machine, these may be housed in one panel (figure 1); whereas larger machines may require multiple panels, often one for control and another for power. The main subsystems and components of a machine automation system are:
The power distribution subsystem feeds power to components, such as motors, drives, and controllers. The control subsystem primarily consists of safety systems, programmable controllers, discrete and analog I/O, communication systems, and HMIs. Let's look at each of these areas in more detail.
Figure 1. For smaller machines, a single panel is often used to house both the power distribution system and the control components.
The National Electric Code (NEC, also NFPA 70) has much to say about using electricity properly to safeguard persons and property. The code comes into play well before the power source connects to the machine control enclosure through a plug, disconnect, or terminal block. At the machine, the NFPA 79: Electrical Standard for Industrial Machinery is the benchmark for industrial machine safety related to fire and electrical hazards. Some of the major requirements in machine control power distribution discussed in these standards include using proper disconnect means, protecting personnel from contact with electrical hazards, and protecting equipment from overcurrent and overloads.
The disconnect—whether a switch, circuit breaker, or cord with a plug—must be provided for any control enclosure fed with voltages of 50 VAC or more. It should be properly sized, positioned, wired, labeled, and, in some cases, interlocked to the enclosure door.
Protecting personnel from contact with electrical hazards is always needed, both inside and outside a machine power or control panel. All conductors must be protected from contact by personnel. Most power distribution devices are designed to facilitate this level of protection, but live components, such as power buses, distribution blocks, and other power terminals, should be covered with a nonconductive, see-through cover.
Protecting equipment from overcurrent is critical to reduce the chance of fire. Conductors and electrical components must be protected from overcurrent related to short circuits. Overcurrent protection devices, such as fuses and circuit breakers, must be sized based on conductor current-carrying capacity, device interrupt rating, maximum fault current, system voltage, load characteristics, and other factors.
For power circuits, branch-circuit-rated devices must be used to meet current-limiting and ground fault protection requirements. Supplemental overcurrent protective devices are not suitable for use in these circuits but work well in downstream control circuits tapped from the load side of the branch circuit.
Motors have special needs in machine control. For every motor, a proper form of electrical control is required, from simple on/off to more complex variable speed applications. Motor control devices include manual motor starters, motor contactors and starters with overloads (figure 2), drives, and soft starters.
A motor circuit must include both overcurrent (short circuit) and overload protection. This typically consists of branch-circuit protection, such as properly rated fuses, and a motor starter with overload protection devices, such as thermal overloads, but additional protection may be needed.
Additional protection to consider for machine control components includes loss of cooling and abnormal temperatures. Ground fault protection is also needed, so a proper ground connection is important. Over, under, and loss of voltage must also be considered. Protection from lightning, overspeed, and loss of a voltage phase in three-phase supplies are additional considerations for proper machine control.
Some motor controllers, such as drives and combination controllers, are self-protected. If this is the case, the device's rating or manufacturer's instructions will clearly note it is suitable for output conductor protection.
Figure 2. These Fuji manual motor starters and contactors from AutomationDirect have high switching capacity and integrate the functions of a molded case circuit breaker and a thermal overload relay.
A risk assessment drives the safety system design as needed to remove motion-causing energy, including electrical and fluid power, to safely stop the equipment for protection of both personnel and machines. Many safety standards come into play for proper machine control at both a mechanical and electrical level. Proper mechanical machine guarding and access points, as well as elimination of identified hazards, is a starting point. Safety relays or safety-rated controllers must be used to monitor safety switches, safety limit switches, light curtains, and safety mats and edges.
In small machine control applications, a safety relay is probably the simplest way to integrate safety functionality for emergency stop, monitoring a guard door, or protecting an operator reaching through a light curtain. In more advanced machines, safety-rated controllers provide the same functions, but can simplify the integration of multiple safety devices. Safety-rated controllers reduce hardwired safety logic by providing a platform to program the safety functions needed for proper and safe machine control.
Available in form factors from small to large, the machine controller can be a programmable logic controller (PLC), a programmable automation controller (PAC), or a PC. The complexity of the machine control application, end-user specifications, and personal preference drive controller selection. Many vendors have families of controllers to cover a range of applications from simple to complex, allowing a machine builder to standardize to some extent. Often three or more physical configurations-small, medium, and large form factors-are available from the controller manufacturer.
Using the same software platform to program a family of controllers is becoming the norm. This allows the designer to first program the system, and then select the right controller based on its capacity to handle the number of I/O points needed, as well as special functions such as proportional, integral, derivative control and data handling. Required capabilities like extensive communications and high-speed control should be carefully evaluated, as these are often the main factors driving controller selection.
Discrete and analog inputs and outputs connect the controller to the machine sensors and actuators. These signals can originate in the main control panel through a terminal strip with wiring to field devices, but a distributed I/O architecture is often a better solution. Distributed I/O reduces wiring by moving the input or output point closer to the field device, and by multiplexing multiple I/O signals over a single cable running from the remote I/O component to the control panel.
For distributed I/O at a smaller scale, IO-Link is a point-to-point serial communication protocol where an IO-Link-enabled device connects to an IO-Link master module. This protocol communicates data from a sensor or actuator directly to a machine controller. It adds more context to the discrete or analog data by delivering diagnostics and detailed device status to the controller.
Another important part of machine control now and for the future is extensive communication capability. It is a good practice to have multiple Ethernet and serial ports available to integrate to a variety of equipment, computers, HMIs, and business and enterprise systems (figure 3).
Multiple high-speed Ethernet ports ensure responsive HMI communication, as well as peer-to-peer and business system networking. Support of industrial Ethernet protocols, including EtherNet/IP and Modbus TCP/IP, is also important for scanner/client and adapter/server connections. These Ethernet connections enable outgoing email, webserver, and remote access communication functions-all important options for machine control.
Machine control often benefits from the availability of legacy communication methods, such as serial RS-232 and RS-485. Modern controllers often also include USB and MicroSD communication and storage options.
A big part of machine control communication is cybersecurity. Consider a layered defense where protection includes remote functions that are only enabled as part of the hardware configuration. For further protection, all tags should be protected from remote access unless the tag is individually enabled for that purpose.
Figure 3. In addition to the multiple communication ports on this BRX controller, additional ports are added using a STRIDE Industrial Ethernet switch and a GS drive serial-to-Ethernet adapter.
The HMI shows vital information about machine conditions using graphical and textual views. HMIs can be in the form of touch panels, text panels, message displays, or industrial monitors. They are used for monitoring, control, status reporting, and many other functions.
IT automation is the use of instructions to create a repeated process that replaces an IT professional's manual work in data centers and cloud deployments. Automation software tools, frameworks and appliances conduct the tasks with minimum administrator intervention. The scope of IT automation ranges from single actions to discrete sequences and, ultimately, to an autonomous IT deployment that takes actions based on user behavior and other event triggers.
IT automation is different from orchestration, but the terms are commonly used together. Automation accomplishes a task repeatedly without human intervention. Orchestration is a broader concept in which the user coordinates automated tasks into a cohesive process or workflow for IT and the business.
IT automation relies on software tools to define and conduct a prescribed series of detailed actions that are invoked manually or by an external trigger, such as a change in IT capacity demand.
IT automation replaces a series of actions and responses between an administrator and the IT environment. For example, an IT automation platform -- such as Microsoft Windows PowerShell -- combines cmdlets, variables and other components into a script to mimic the series of commands and steps that an administrator would invoke one line at a time through the command-line interface (CLI) to provision a virtual machine (VM) or create a backup process. An administrator can achieve a more complex IT automation outcome by combining multiple scripts into a series. These limited-scope automation processes are most beneficial when they replace a task that an administrator must perform frequently.
Enterprise-class IT infrastructure automation tools trigger actions in response to thresholds and other situational conditions in the IT environment. Advanced IT automation tools oversee the configuration of systems, software and other infrastructure components; recognize unauthorized or unexpected changes; and automatically take corrective actions. For example, if a workload stops responding, this triggers the automated steps to restart it on a different server that has the available capacity to run it. When IT automation is set to enforce a desired state of configurations, the tool detects changes in a server's configuration that are out of spec and restores it to the correct settings.
IT automation tools shift the focus from completing repetitive tasks to strategic efforts to match business needs.
IT operations managers and IT teams can use IT automation for several tasks, including the following:
IT automation offers the following benefits:
While IT automation has several beneficial use cases, it doesn't always guarantee results. IT staff must be competent and skilled using IT automation tools to translate behaviors into concrete procedural steps.
IT automation can pose the following challenges:
Due to the digital transformation, businesses need to expedite and automate business processes that in the past were done manually, such as record keeping or HR onboarding. IT automation and business automation work collectively to help achieve this goal. For example, a company might use IT automation to transition from a legacy paper-driven and time-intensive human resources (HR) onboarding process to an automated and online HR onboarding platform.
The following highlights five types of automation:
IT automation products appear and evolve rapidly; each product has a specific focus and scope for IT and the business.
Microsoft provides automation in products including System Center 2016 Orchestrator and Service Manager, PowerShell and PowerShell Desired State Configuration.
Other automation vendors offer more narrowly focused product lines. For example, Broadcom provides Server Automation for tasks such as server provisioning and patching, operating system configuration, and automation of storage and application components, client systems and other major enterprise specializations. A similar tool -- BMC Software's BladeLogic Server Automation -- includes preconfigured compliance policies for the Center for Internet Security, Defense Information Systems Agency, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and other regulations.
There are also numerous automation vendors in the software-defined infrastructure market, including Chef, Puppet, SaltStack and HashiCorp. These DevOps IT automation tools support software development and deployment integrated with infrastructure configurations, sometimes called infrastructure as code. The automation capabilities are designed so users can create and support consistent workflows from development to IT operations.
IT automation is hardly a new concept, but the technology is still in its formative stages. Even the most full-featured tools depend on an IT professional or team to develop and maintain discrete automation elements, such as scripts, templates, policies and workflows.
IT automation continues to transform in the following two ways:
AI and machine learning. IT automation will progress to act with greater intelligence and autonomy. IT automation platforms are likely to rely heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies. For example, an automation tool can synthesize data on configurations, performance and other information across an IT deployment and process these inputs to discover a normal system operations benchmark, a deviation from which would trigger corrective actions.
Another real-life example is the company Sobereye Inc., which uses AI to improve workplace safety in the construction, mining, transportation and manufacturing industries. By offering a one-minute self-test to employees, it checks for any impairments, such as sleep deprivation, fatigue, medications and drugs to eliminate human errors, which are the biggest contributors to workplace accidents.
Augmented reality. The use of augmented reality (AR) and IT automation is closing workforce gaps in healthcare companies and expediting training for new hires across many other industries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, during the Great Resignation, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans quit their jobs. Many companies are using AR to bridge the workforce gap and to get new hires to become productive employees. For example, some warehouse operators have discovered that using AR systems that work with voice commands, such as Google's smart glasses, can shorten the employee's training period by displaying customer order information and product location directly in the wearer's field of vision. Employees might be guided to product shelf arrangements and to each item in the order of picking. Traditionally, this would require performing multiple steps to retrieve the product.
Enterprise automation technologies, including low code, iPaaS and declarative automation, play important factors in improving business processes. Learn about the four key enterprise automation technologies in depth.
The company is the world’s best Automation Components supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.