Clutch control

My dumb question of the day. I need to get the terminology correct to document a PLC program and can never keep this straight:

On machinery, when you energize the clutch solenoid, are you "engaging" or "dis-engaging" the clutch? In other words, does engaging the clutch permit the motor to turn the load?

How about on a car, when you push the clutch pedal in, is the clutch engaged or disengaged?

1. Engaging - at least on our machinery, turning on the solenoid causes power transfer from the motor through the clutch to the machine.

2. Disengaged

I view a clutch as 'engaged' when it is coupling power from its input shaft to its output shaft.

For the car clutch read here

For the machine... it would depend on the way the solenoid was wired, I don't think you can label them true=engaged nor can you say engage free turning, I have them both ways, fail-safe would also depend on the 'owner'

I think its kind of in the eye of the beholder

For the most part I try and follow Berine's way

Hmmm

A clutch is a clutch is a clutch, it is a device that couples 2 shafts with one shaft being the driver and the other the driven. Engaged means the 2 shafts are coupled, disengaged means the shafts are not i.e. the driven is no longer being driven.

Naturally this is the basics.

The difference in industrial applications is not how it is wired but how it may be designed. In a car the clutch is always engaged, you depress the pedal to disengagne it.

On a machine a clutch may be designed to engage or disengage when energized and vice versa.

The reason for this is that some applications may need the coupling the majority of the time with it being released on occasion (similar to shifting in a car); therefore the clutch is engaged when DE-energized.

In other applications the coupling may only need to occur at specific times i.e. the clutch would be energized to engage the coupling as needed.