Top 5 Control Engineering articles, March 17-23

Were you out last week? Miss something? Here are Control Engineering's five most-clicked articles from last week, March 17-23, including articles about intermittent high-voltage fault, PLC, harmonics in electrical systems, OEMs, and robotic controls.

March 24, 2014

1. Sniffing out an intermittent high-voltage fault

Application Update: Troubleshoot a high-voltage electrical fault and see recommended solutions. 

2. PLCopen part 4 blurs the lines among PLCs, robotic, and motion control

Inside Machines: The PLCopen working group for motion control has standardized and logically defined all aspects of machine control programming, providing one of the best attempts of integrating PLC, robot, and motion control in an easy-to-understand language common among many manufacturers. 

3. Mitigating harmonics in electrical systems

Although devices using power electronics can produce distortion in electrical distribution systems, it’s up to the engineer to apply effective solutions to mitigate them. 

4. Product Exclusive: OEMs can save time, costs with custom-build PLC

Triangle Research International Inc. (TRi) is supplying original equipment manufacturers with the brain of its top-of-the-line PLC in a small CPU board called SmartTILE (TRi Integrated Logic Engine), so OEMs can optimize their equipment with less time and effort. 

5. PLC-based vs. proprietary robotic controls

Open robotic control: For facilities that already use programmable logic controllers (PLCs) for other machine control functions, integrating robotic control into a PLC may be a wiser choice than relying on the controller provided by the robot manufacturer. Here’s what to consider.

The list was developed using CFE Media’s web analytics for stories viewed on www.controleng.com, March 17 – 23, for articles published within the last two months.

– Jessica DuBois-Maahs, associate content manager, CFE Media, jdmaahs@cfemedia.com