Book Image

Industrial Automation from Scratch

By : Olushola Akande
Book Image

Industrial Automation from Scratch

By: Olushola Akande

Overview of this book

Industrial automation has become a popular solution for various industries looking to reduce manual labor inputs and costs by automating processes. This book helps you discover the abilities necessary for excelling in this field. The book starts with the basics of industrial automation before progressing to the application of switches, sensors, actuators, and motors, and a direct on-line (DOL) starter and its components, such as circuit breakers, contactors, and overload relay. Next, you'll explore VFDs, their parameter settings, and how they can be wired and programmed for induction motor control. As you advance, you'll learn the wiring and programming of major industrial automation tools – PLCs, HMIs, and SCADA. You’ll also get to grips with process control and measurements (temperature, pressure, level, and flow), along with analog signal processing with hands-on experience in connecting a 4–20 mA transmitter to a PLC. The concluding chapters will help you grasp various industrial network protocols such as FOUNDATION Fieldbus, Modbus, PROFIBUS, PROFINET, and HART, as well as emerging trends in manufacturing (Industry 4.0) and its empowering technologies (such as IoT, AI, and robotics). By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a practical understanding of industrial automation concepts for machine automation and control.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Learning the Concepts and Skills Required to Get Started
8
Part 2: Understanding PLC, HMI, and SCADA
14
Part 3: Process Control, Industrial Network, and Smart Factory

Understanding Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs)

The previous three chapters covered a great deal on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), which are the brains behind most automated machines. We learned how to automate industrial processes using PLCs, sensors, and actuators. However, in most cases, PLCs, sensors, and actuators alone cannot give us the functionality required in a real-life industrial process. A Human Machine Interface (HMI) is usually integrated into a manufacturing line and other industrial processes to give users easy control of the machines and to give them feedback on machine statuses.

In the previous chapter, we learned how to control machines using PLCs, whereby the user or operator presses a push button to start the machine and a pilot light gives an indication of whether the machine is running or not. Integrating HMIs into such systems makes them more user-friendly. HMIs allow you to start or stop your machine and even get feedback or status updates for the...