The Vaal branch kicked off the year with a well attended opening braai in February which brought many of the Vaal region members together. From the Vaal branch perspective the New Year brings with it a new set of challenges, therefore if you have ever wanted to serve on the committee, now is the time to get involved.
During the braai, the branch took a moment to introduce the elected committee members for 2012 (l to r): Resham Sivnarain, Godfrey Nyamande, Eben Grobbelaar (vice chairman), Solly Mabitsela (chairman), Wimpie van Tonder, Oratile Sematle (secretary) and Deon Lottering (treasurer)
One of our drives is to promote automation and control as a profession and encourage school leavers to enter this amazing industry of ours. In addition, the SAIMC collaboration with ECSA, in terms of accreditation of CPD training material, provides a great opportunity for professional engineers and technicians to get involved at different levels.
The first monthly meeting of the year was held on 1 March, Lourens Van Niekerk from WIKA Instruments was the speaker for the evening. Lourens has been with WIKA for nine years; he started his career in the temperature department and has worked in the associated product department for the last six years as product manager. His topic was ‘Isolators, convertors and transmitters in conjunction with power rail supplies’.
Lourens’ great presentation earned him a certificate of appreciation presented by the Vaal branch vice chairman, Eben Grobbelaar (l)
Great aspects of this type of technology are the wide ranges of I/O that can be accommodated, the flexibility, ease of configuration, high galvanic isolation capability, fast response time, high accuracy, vibration immunity, noise emission and immunity and wide operating ambient temperature range. An aspect that makes it remarkable is the robustness of the power rail and redundancy of power supply systems on the power rail. It is expected that the technology will simplify the implementation and commissioning of field I/O significantly and also provide excellent systems integration capabilities.
We thank WIKA for its consistent support.
Visitors
The turnout from the members was excellent with representation from the petrochemical refineries, steel, mining, power and chemical industries, as well as engineering, construction and consulting services and various service and product suppliers. We would like to thank our audiences and presenters for their unwavering support and are looking forward to welcoming everyone again as this year progresses.
Next meeting
The next Vaal branch meeting is scheduled for Thursday 3 April at the Iscor Bowling Club in Vanderbijlpark. Please contact Oratile Sematle on oratile.sematle@sasol.com for more information.
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