Eaton invited James to tour their Industrial Controls Mobile Showcase. A truck trailer contains the entire showcase. It is a clever way to bring industrial equipment demonstrations to your company’s door. The guide for this tour was Mike Kaminiski, a product manager at Eaton.
Watch the Video:
DG1 General Purpose Drives
The first demo involved Eaton’s DG1 General Purpose motor drives in a water-handling example. In this setup, a Modbus connection links two drives together. One controls a primary pump, and the other manages a boost pump. When the primary drive detects pressure reaching a certain point, it communicates with the secondary drive to activate the boost pump.
MCC (Motor Control Center)
Next, Mike showed James the various motor starters available in the Motor Control Center, or MCC, station. These starters offer different advantages for different applications. For example, a soft starter ramps up the motor’s speed to reduce wear on the bearings. The same starter can also ramp down the speed to prevent the Water Hammer Effect—which Mike does a great job explaining!
The MCC station also had some of Eaton’s C445 intelligent motor management relays. These units have a mini-PLC, or programmable logic controller, built in. This capability means in addition to controlling the starters, they can also perform some intelligent operations. The demo used clear containers to show pumps moving coolant around a system.
HVAC Controls
Over at the HVAC station, Mike explained to James how Eaton’s DH1 motor driver compares to the general-purpose device. Then he explained why some air handling systems have redundant motor drives, like those in a hospital. The redundancy is necessary in case a catastrophic event, like a lightning strike, occurs and damages one of the drivers. James found the demo simple but effective!
Material Handling
A conveyor system demonstrated Eaton’s solutions for material handling. The push buttons, switches, lights, and alarms humans interact with are called “pilots.” And Eaton has a wide range of them! They also offer an intelligent wiring system called SmartWire-DT, which can reduce wiring and installation time by up to 70% compared to traditional methods.
Controls
The last stop on the tour was a wall of controls. These range from basic motor starters to miniature circuit breakers to Intelligent solutions like the Power Defense family. (We covered those in a previous Workbench Wednesdays video!)
If you’d like to learn more about Eaton’s Industrial Controls or see more demos, check out an extended version of the tour video:
Bonus Content:
- Eaton Solutions
- How Eaton's Power Defense Circuit Breakers Work -- Workbench Wednesdays 41
- Eaton's Mobile Showcase Details
Top Comments