MMI (Man Machine Interface)
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Man Machine Interface (also sometimes referred to as Human Machine Interface) gives the operator a window into the process. The goal of good HMI programming is for safe, effective and efficient human-machine interaction.
The key to excellent MMI design is the carefully audited assessment of all potential users, starting with the end user, but also including managers and maintenance personnel. ERS Automation is available to design and implement a successful MMI, even when different communication protocols are required. |
Vision Inspection
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Vision Inspection plays a key role in automating quality control in all industries, including automotive, semiconductor, medical, food, packaging and more. Vision Systems inspect for part presence, part absence, flaws, colors, character recognition, and more.
ERS Automation has extensive experience in choosing and implementing Vision Inspection systems for its clients. |
Machine Controller (or PLC)
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Machine Controller is a computer which has been programmed to control manufacturing processes like assembly lines, robotic devices, or an activity that requires high reliability, ease of programming and process diagnosis.
ERS Automation has extensive experience in choosing and implementing MC systems for Beckhoff TwinCat 3, Modicon Proworx, Allen Bradley RS 500/5000 as our main vendors. |
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
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Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, or SCADA, is a computer system that gathers, displays and analyzes data. SCADA systems sit a level above the real time controllers that and control a plant equipment in industries such as telecommunications, water and waste water control, energy, oil and gas refining, transportation and more.
ERS has experience implementing SCADA systems. |
Motion Control
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Motion control helps move or stabilize parts of machines in a controlled manner. The main components involved typically include a motion controller, an energy amplifier, and one or more prime movers or actuators. Motion Controllers are widely used across many industries.
ERS Automation has extensive experience choosing and implementing Motion Controllers that help a larger automation solution. |
Safety
The Square D "Jones is Dead!" advertisement from 1921 is an industry icon, representing a rebuke to the prevailing notion too common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that "injuries were just the cost of doing business." Photo courtesy of the Square D company. Click to access a larger file.
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How do you properly implement safety? The answer is more complex than you might think, because there are many competing and legitimate perspectives to consider. Industrial settings often are intrinsically hazardous environments, and the task at hand is how to implement necessary safety equipment and practices without impacting production quality or volume.
For example, flying 500 miles per hour in a hollow cylinder at 35,000 feet is just intrinsically dangerous, but we manage down that risk with every possible tool at our disposal so that a user can fly safely, a company can be productive, and a worker can earn a wage. They are all legitimate concerns -- safety, productivity, profitability -- and they are all risks that have to be managed downward in order to be rendered negligible, if not completely eliminated. Unfortunately, injuries used to be callously regarded as simply "the cost of doing business." (See Ad at LEFT) A company can and will suffer losses and can go out of business with that prevailing attitude, because it is unacceptable. ERS has a history of designing and integrating safety into machines according to required standards, empowering workers to be safer, companies to be productive, and employees to be profitable. One does not always have to come at the expense of the other when a company resolves that failure in safety, productivity or profitability are not options. ERS Automation designs safety systems that are more easily modified for future safety regulations. |
AC Drives
Pictured: Schneider Electric ATV 312
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An AC Drive is an adjustable-speed drive that controls AC motor speed and torque by varying motor input frequency and voltage. AC Drives are also known as a Variable-Frequency Drive (VFD), an Adjustable-Frequency Drive, a Variable Speed Drive, a Micro Drive or Inverter Drive, and are used in applications ranging from small appliances to large mine mill drives and compressors.
About 25% of the world's electrical energy is consumed by electric motors in industrial applications, which need different levels of energy at different stages of operation. Instead of consuming a constant supply of energy regardless of a machine's need in a particular moment, AC Drives empower a machine to selectively call up or decline additional power, resulting in substantial energy consumption savings. ERS Automation has extensive experience designing and implementing AC Drive solutions. |