cardosocea
Member
No soft PLCs for me! Useless. I see that the IIOT **** talks about predicting failures - bloody magic stuff it it can predict the failure of a prox sensor! Give it to me!
I never understood the appeal of a soft PLC when PLC families are kept for decades and anything related to a computer will last about 5 years in the market place. Why would someone embark on that is really beyond me.
The failure prediction is complete and utter poppycock... even yesterday I had a visit from Endress+Hauser where they were raving about a flowmeter with a wireless webserver in it and it created its own calibration reports. I asked how can that be if nothing is running through it? How can those calibration reports hold against a known and maintained standard? He then came out with a TUV certification (that wasn't readable and therefore likely to not answer my question).
Then he came out with a self calibrating temperature probe that is going to disrupt the market because at a specific point of 130 degrees it checks that the temperature is correct.
I didn't have the time to tell him the uselessness and stupidity of that claim as there is no such thing as a single point calibration.
Instrumentation and automation manufacturers are coming up with all this to maybe try and impress the young uns starting now (I'm 37, by the way) with all the buzzwords and new-ish technologies.
The reality however, is that with time and proper procedures it is possible to estimate fairly accurately the overall impact of failures in a system, but impossible to determine which. Meaning that over the course of a year, it is possible to know that X amount of dollars is going to be spent in fixing stuff, but exactly what is to be fixed is up to the gods or good technicians that inspect equipment.
Obviously, you can install diagnostic equipment in certain machines (like engines and so on) and get a good indication... but not at the proximity switch level I think.