Things You May Want to Know About Industrial Machinery: an Overview of Industrial Machinery

An overview of industrial machinery

Dell Marine is the collective name of two companies in Jacksonville, Florida called Dell Marine Boat Sales and Dell Marine Tug and Barge founded by Maxey Dell Moody III in 2004.

When labor unions wanted help and asked for support what did americans do .? of industrial machinery

I'm mostly in agreement with you. But I don't think those good jobs went anywhere, they just disappeared. From, roughly, World War I to, say, Watergate the USA was the one nation in the world capable of producing large numbers of everything from small kitchen gadgets, to electronics, to large industrial machinery that, if not works-of-art, were at least good enough, or better, for the price. The whole world wanted our products. Times have changed. The Asians have caught up with us. We won't get anywhere wishing the good old days would come back. We have to come up with something that we can sell to them if we want to avoid becoming a third world nation.

What that something might be is a tough question. I have a few ideas, but I don't think they really belong here.

But it's something that people should spend some time thinking about.

Reliability of the Arduino platform for industrial use of industrial machinery

I am not an engineer of any type. I am an electronics technician at a large aerospace company and have to retrofit and/or upgrade numerically controlled machinery like this all the time due to ancient equipment that we can no longer source parts for. While cost is a big issue the one that will get you in big trouble is the safety concern. In the 2012 edition of the NFPA 79 (The electrical standard for Industrial Machinery) subpart 9.

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2 it states: "Control systems incorporating software- and firmware- based controllers performing safety related functions shall be self monitoring and conform to all of the following:If you are capable of ensuring you meet provisions 1 and 2 I know you will not be able to meet provision 3 (unless you are accustomed to dealing with regulatory authorities) HOWEVER, If you use the arduino just to monitor and advise that a safety condition has occurred not control the actual safety circuitry itself you should not be in violation of this legal requirement.i.e. An e-stop chain is in place that disconnects power from all motor contactors/drives from a main E-stop contactor when broken by any e-stop switch in the circuit. You would not want to use the arduino to control the e-stop circuit but you should be fine using an auxilary contact switch on the E-stop buttons to tell the operator which E-stop has been pressed on a display.

In this way even if the arduino is trying to drive a motor with control signals there will not be any actual power available because a main E-stop contactor has dropped out controlled by a hard energized e-stop chain - not your microcontroller.Make sure you are aware of all of the regulations in the NFPA70E and NFPA79 and meet all of them. Trust me you do not want to find yourself in a litigation setting trying to answer questions without full knowledge of these regulations before you design something.

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other things to consider are stopping motion too quickly - sometimes things have to remain energized for a set period of time before stopping to prevent a safety hazard - i.e. a large grinding wheel must spin down at a set rate so that it does not explode from stopping abruptly - in this instance you would want a large resistor that would use the motors Counter EMF to safely slow the rotational speed. You would want the contactor that dropped out the motor drive to put this resistor in line with the motor windings - not the arduinoThese scenarios are also covered in the NFPA79.

Make sure you and your employer are comfortable meeting these regulations and accepting any potential liabilities.definitely use a ruggeduino (it is worth the 45.oo for the added protection) and optical isolation for anything attached to the circuitry over 24 volts.

Most of the arduino compatible relay controls on the same site are OMRON and used for many industrial applications. Have someone with experience and qualifications review your design before implementation - remember none of us is as smart as all of us The only way to test it for your application for durability would be to design it and see how long it works. Definitely have an identical spare ready to replace on the shelf if cost/time are big considerations.