Top 5 Control Engineering articles, October 6-12: The first PLC, the PLC’s future, electrical power measurement, more
Articles about the first PLC, the PLC’s future, electrical power measurement on 3-phase motors, automating automation, and open- vs. closed-loop control were Control Engineering’s five most clicked articles from last week, October 6-12. Were you out last week? Miss something? You can catch up here.
Control Engineering Top 5 most read articles online, for Oct. 6-12, the first PLC, the PLC’s future, electrical power measurement on 3-phase motors, automating automation, and open- vs. closed-loop control. Link to each article below.
1. Inside the competition for the first PLC
The race to develop the first programmable logic controllers was underway inside General Motors’ Hydra-Matic Transmission Division in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1970. Three finalists had very different architectures.
PLCs are evolving and continue to be the best option for a variety of industrial automation applications. Greater programming flexibility and ease, scalability, more memory, smaller sizes, very high-speed (Gigabit) Ethernet, and built-in wireless are among evolving programmable logic controller features.
3. Electrical power measurement on 3-phase motors
Testing drive-and-motor systems is a three-step process.
4. Automating automation: Why do smart devices have to be configured manually?
While smart instrumentation and field devices have highly sophisticated capabilities, configuration is still a mostly manual process. Users want to know why they still have to perform this action (and many others) the hard way.
5. Open- vs. closed-loop control
Automatic control operations can be described as either open-loop or closed-loop. The difference is feedback.
The list was developed using CFE Media’s web analytics for stories viewed on controleng.com, October 6-12, for articles published within the last two months.
– Chris Vavra, production editor, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com.
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