The SAIMC Durban branch April technology evening was well attended with the audience eager to hear Carl Reinecke’s presentation titled: Earthing for instrumentation – applied witchcraft or engineering? Carl Reinecke lectures instrumentation oriented subjects in the Department of Electronic Engineering at DUT. His area of speciality is PLCs and associated control systems, making him well qualified to present this paper.
Few other topics invoke debate in the instrumentation community as does that of earthing. Carl went through the critical aspects such as protection against noise and extremes such as lightning, which can only be protected against through correct design procedures and selection of sub-systems. From the field instruments, through the cabling infrastructure to the control system: including support equipment such as power supplies, surge protection devices, earthing, bonding and lightning protection. He showed that a weak link anywhere quickly leads to failure with the costly consequences of repair, downtime and damaged reputation.
Durban technology evenings:
The topic for the June technology evening held by the Durban branch of the SAIMC is Process Information Systems and will be held on Wednesday 3 June 2009. Dean Trattles from OSIsoft will be presenting. Venue: University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, Room G-01, Faculty of Engineering, 17:30 for 18:00.
“Process information systems have significantly evolved from the early historians whose function was to archive data from the DCS and to provide trending and data extraction tools for reporting often in another proprietary environment. Modern systems form an indispensable realtime infrastructure in the manufacturing plant, marshalling data from disparate data sources, applying context and providing this information to company personnel and third party MRO and ERP systems through standard visualisation portals and gateways. Open standards, security, scalability, reliability and support are essential components that will be discussed in this presentation.” – Dean Trattles.
Dean obtained his BSc in Chemical Engineering in 1977 from the University of Cape Town. He worked for 10 years in the fields of process engineering, process design and plant automation with Engen Refinery and Illovo Sugar during which time he spent two years studying advanced process control at Louisiana State University. For the next 12 years he carried out engineering consulting and system integration with Bosch & Associates, Best SA and ITSI and has spent the last six years as regional manager sub-Saharan Africa for OSIsoft, a vendor of realtime information systems. He holds memberships of SAIChE, CSSA, SAIMC and is a registered professional engineer.
We are happy to report that 2008 saw an increase in the number of technology evenings held by the Durban branch of the SAIMC and a poll at the recent AGM revealed that attendees to these evenings feel that both the presentation content and presenters are good and that members derive value from attending.
The survey also showed that people were particularly interested in industrial instrumentation and legislative presentations (not vendor related) and we would like to invite anybody interested in presenting a talk here to e-mail your suggested topic to: vmaharaj@cubetechnologies.net
After the success of last year’s annual function we have again booked the Heritage Theatre so diarise 31 October for another fun-filled evening with the ever popular Gee-Jays who are going to be performing a brand new show – ‘60s hit revivals.
All enquiries: Jane van der Spuy on +27(0)31 764 0593 or jane@technews.co.za
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| Email: | ina@saimc.co.za |
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