| Summary: | Since the early 1990s, several major factories in Malaysia have started to replace human power with automation machine especially in electronics field. Ideally,
such automation machine can be operated automatically, or monitored by an operator.
Somehow the knowledge of the operator towards automation machine is very limited
due to the complicated system design. Therefore, this project is to design an automation
training module using programmable logic controller (PLC) for the use of testing and
simulation. This is a combination of software and hardware based project. The
hardware implemented is a power circuit with all necessary electrical components such
as circuit breaker to ensure the safety of the trainee. Understanding the power
consumption is the success key of choosing the suitable circuit breaker for specific
applications. The software incorporated in the control system are MATLAB 7.0 and
CX-Programmer. MATLAB is being used because it can communicate through serial
port using graphical user interface. Serial port in the PC is utilized as the control port
since it has a direct connectivity for communications between PC and PLC. The main
output of the system is an AC motor of a conveyor. The control system is basically
controlling the start and stop time of the conveyor motor. The user can set the time and
duration for the motor to turn on. This shows that the number of human operators hence
the cost of operation for a factory can be reduced. It is hoped that in the future, this
project will be upgraded and further developed to support extra functions for more
complicated simulation. Finally, this project is to help the student especially
mechatronics students to understand and to apply their understanding of automation.
|
|---|