As the co-owner of American Plating Power, Peter has over 30 years experience in the power electronics and metal plating industry.
Q: Is it possible to collect and save Rectifier production data, how can this be achieved?
A: There are two ways of collecting rectifier data such as Current, Voltage, Bath Temperature and Time Stamp during production runs:
- Using external data collection equipment such as a Chart Recorder. This is sort of a dated way of capturing production parameter trends. There are various forms of Chart Recorders including handheld electronic equipment and strip chart recorders. These devices will capture trends electronically on internal or external memory, or on paper media. This method requires extra signal conditioning of the signals and increased handling/maintenance time.
- Utilizing the rectifier feedback signals that are already conditioned and used by the internal control circuits and local indicators (such as meters, etc.). A simple, local PLC can collect all the data electronically from the Rectifier and have this data available real-time to, for example, a laptop PC running data collection software. The trending data will automatically be stored and ready for use with reporting software.
Data collection is a great way to have production trending available for reporting to customers, reporting to organizations such as Nadcap, or even with trouble shooting of various production aspects.
