Monitoring of AC current
Hi
I’m looking for some ideas for monitoring current of resistive heater loads. I have a new machine that has 36 heat zones controlled by a SLC 5/04 using BTM’s (barrel temperature control modules). I want to monitor the actual current of those zones real time. I have done it in a couple of ways in the past method one is to install current transformers on each zone and then set up a bridge circuit to convert the CT output to a 4-20 ma circuit. That works well but uses up a lot of rack space. Method two was to install a power monitor on the feeder to the heat load. Then by monitoring the load and doing a bit shift I was able to cycle each load in a programmed sequence with the other heats off. This works fairly well but does not allow real time monitoring of each load the reason being if I cycle thru the heat zones too often it will affect the process. So my new idea is to see if I can find any CT’s that can connect directly to a network like Device-net or Ethernet. Has anyone seen any products that might be of help?
Thanks for your ideas.
Rich
Hi
I’m looking for some ideas for monitoring current of resistive heater loads. I have a new machine that has 36 heat zones controlled by a SLC 5/04 using BTM’s (barrel temperature control modules). I want to monitor the actual current of those zones real time. I have done it in a couple of ways in the past method one is to install current transformers on each zone and then set up a bridge circuit to convert the CT output to a 4-20 ma circuit. That works well but uses up a lot of rack space. Method two was to install a power monitor on the feeder to the heat load. Then by monitoring the load and doing a bit shift I was able to cycle each load in a programmed sequence with the other heats off. This works fairly well but does not allow real time monitoring of each load the reason being if I cycle thru the heat zones too often it will affect the process. So my new idea is to see if I can find any CT’s that can connect directly to a network like Device-net or Ethernet. Has anyone seen any products that might be of help?
Thanks for your ideas.
Rich