Inductive Automation Blog

In this first installment of Power Hour, Application Engineering Managers from Inductive Automation will share the inner workings of how IA built the Ignition public demo, offering expert development strategies and tips and tricks for Ignition Perspective along the way.

Learn about your options for device simulation, including the new simulator in Ignition, SFCs, and connecting to emulated PLCs. As always, this is also an open Q&A, where we can also discuss any other Ignition related topics.

Project Overview

There are a variety of limiting factors with traditional hands-on equipment training. Most pieces of equipment are not built for the constant repetition required in a classroom or hands-on training environment. In most cases, the number of students exceeds the available equipment — so training is often done in stages rather than in sequence. In addition, valuable and strategic training time is often restricted by the setup and tear-down time. Weather delays are a continual problem for in-the-field, hands-on training. The use of hazardous chemicals and disposal are of real concern as well as the filling and phasing on and off of various component systems such as hydraulics or tank fills. These are all issues that limit the actual training time.

By creating an exact duplication of the actual system or process, the Guild Training Simulator sets a new standard in equipment training. The Guild Training Simulator — engineered to the exact specifications of the original piece of equipment — gives both the instructor and trainee virtual product accessibility where they can gain hands-on experience before they ever activate a switch.

This project runs two clients that act as one training simulator over two PCs with one gateway. We also have two applications on the system, which can be switched between using a VBA program that was custom-made.

The training simulators allow for easier training for the military. Training is no longer restricted by weather or limitations of equipment. The system is also portable and can be loaded on any PC. This will make training more effective for a larger audience. Training is now more efficient and less costly. It’s portable and easy to use.

Other departments in the Army are interested in this type of training. Also, a maintenance mode is being considered, with an emphasis on how to troubleshoot hardware issues. There is also a possibility of applying this type of simulated training to other industries where training is needed.

Project Overview

This was a control systems upgrade for the space simulator, which is a joint venture of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the California Institute of Technology. The space simulator is a large chamber for testing spacecraft. It simulates conditions in space, including the heat and light of the sun, and extremely low temperatures. The chamber houses the world’s largest mirror. Vacuum pumps and other equipment can create a vacuum effect within the chamber, which is 60 feet high and 25 feet in diameter.

Trimax engineers, working with JPL engineers, decided to upgrade the redundant GE 90/70 PLC-based control solution with the latest GE RX3i redundant platform. This allowed for minimal wiring changes along with minimal downtime and process interruptions.

The new system employs about 2,000 digital input and output points along with 750 analog input and output points spread across redundant RX3i CPUs. Each CPU along with its redundant counterpart is networked using Ethernet-based ProfiNET communications.

The SCADA upgrade was where the most improvement was made. It was decided to replace the aging silk screen graphic panels and Wonderware-based system with an Ignition-based system.

Upgrading to Ignition allowed Trimax to deploy new features such as:
 

• Alarm Notifications and announcements via the standard Ignition alarm management module along with additional scripting. Special scripts and dlls were created to convert alarm text to wav files used for alarm announcements.
• Standard Ignition modules for security and user management to create and maintain secure access to the system.
• Redundant servers and software modules were used to increase uptime and performance.
• Because of the graphic capabilities of Ignition, Trimax was able to create elaborate and user-specific overviews for the simulator using built-in images and user-specific images to the Ignition Image Directory.
• Overviews were used which include various templates which among other indicators show process flow. UDTs allowed Trimax to change values based on real-time tag values.
• Using the standard Ignition PDF viewer, Trimax created file viewer functionality where the user can view system drawings, manuals and operational instructions.
• Built-in Ignition functions and objects allowed Trimax to develop a complete device management system that helps the customer maintain the system.
• Trimax developed a module that displays usage details of the critical components of the facility such as LN2 consumption, lamp power used, time in chamber, etc. This allows JPL to deliver accurate reports and invoices to their customers.

The latest GE RX3i hardware married to Ignition allowed Trimax to deliver a complete control systems upgrade for JPL/NASA.