Only through proper troubleshooting and then solving the underlying problems can control loop performance be improved. Process design certainly plays a role in control loop performance, but experience ...

Good building mechanical design requires a firm grasp of the mechanical engineering fundamentals (thermodynamics, psychrometrics, the fan laws, etc.). The same can be said about the BAS design needed ...

Power plants–especially coal-fired boilers–pose a set of process control problems unparalleled in other industries. Rapid load ramps, continuous unit demand changes, variable fuel quality and process ...

When implementing cooling solutions for electronic equipment, system designers are confronted with a complex set of variables. The cooling requirements are typically dynamic, and ambient temperatures ...

One of the bigger problems with any CNC machine or 3D printer is the issue of missed steps when moving the toolhead. If a stepper motor misses a step, the entire layer of the print – and every layer ...

In 2012, Automation World published an article looking at the decision factors faced when choosing electric or pneumatic actuators. More than a decade later, manufacturing engineers and OEMs still ...

The importance of motor trajectory profiles and how they’re used in brushless DC (BLDC) motor control to minimize vibration and smooth out other performance issues. Why the PID loop is the most widely ...

Machines and processes are controlled using many strategies, from simple ladder logic to custom algorithms for specialized process control, but proportional-integral-derivative (PID) is the most ...