Tightening capital budgets and the need to maximise revenue are driving the process industries towards unified controller platforms for automating plant operations. Not only does a unified platform ensure Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) support for increased network efficiency and reduced network engineering time, it also confines costs to one common, scalable hardware suite and software package. An added advantage is that it gives the control designer a consistent look and feel across the automation disciplines. The alternate option of using separate best-in-class controllers increases costs and makes coordination between processes a challenge.
The MasterLogic PLC from Honeywell is a unified PLC platform backed by a powerful and versatile CPU with complimentary software – the SoftMaster. The PLC is modular and scalable with online maintenance and troubleshooting. SoftMaster provides the engineer with an integrated PLC engineering environment – an all-in-one window for ladder programming, configuration/setup of CPU or other special/communication modules, debugging, monitoring, troubleshooting, documentation and maintenance. A vast library of standard function blocks allows the engineer to create new user-defined function blocks.
The MasterLogic PLC is an excellent choice for automation requirements where the primary mode of control will be through high-speed logic. Facilitated by a powerful processor, the MasterLogic CPU provides high-speed execution of program instructions at the rate of 42 nanosec/step. Backplane communication data transfer is facilitated by the 7 MB program memory, 2 MB data memory, and 16 MB built-in flash memory. In addition, dedicated intelligent communication modules (Ethernet, Serial, Profibus) offer co-processing assistance to the main controller CPU.
This advanced controller can be used anywhere efficient and comprehensive solutions are required. In southern Africa, the MasterLogic has been successfully applied in the mining, metals and minerals industry; food and beverage as well as in the sugar sector with standalone boilers.
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