It’s standard for any piece of machinery to have a central panel that controls its various functions. Where industrial furnaces are concerned, the control board is more than just the brain of the machine and a critical component in industrial heating processes.
Learn more below about this important element in your furnaces.
Control Board Components
Normally the board is linked to the Motor control Center (MCC) which manages the start-up and shut-down of the motors.
Typically, the control board is comprised of:
• Inputs that detect the machine environment: this constitutes the command center, which can be a PLC, a microprocessor or a PC.
• Outputs: using control relays, various elements such as pistons, valves and the motors themselves are initialized.
Burner Management System (BMS)
Furnace control panels have an additional system known as the BMS that is responsible for turning on, switching off and monitoring the combustion system as required.
The BMS is different from other features in that it is independent of the logic of the PLC or main controller. It is built according to different safety standards, so you have to pay careful attention to where it will be used when designing the wider system. In modern systems that are less than five years old, this element may already be integrated into the control system.
The BMS must always meet the following criteria (among many others):
• It needs to be password protected
• Modifications must be traceable, with records of which changes were made and by whom
• Inputs, outputs and associated logic must be registered as safe
Most equipment around today continues to use the traditional method where the BMS is separate from the controller, but the trend is increasingly towards integrating it into a secure PLC.
How Nutec Bickley can help you
A factor that many overlook is their equipment’s useful lifetime; i.e. equipment will begin to fail because it has already come to the end of its expected life cycle. There are actually regulations that require monitoring of the equipment life cycle.
At Nutec Bickley we provide combustion systems that send notifications to anticipate component changes.
Great expertise is required in the area of combustion and regulations surrounding these systems, since what may appear as just a day-to-day combustion function is not so simple in the world of safety. There are certain criteria and types of wiring required to comply with safety regulations.
We accept that there are many system integrators who can put together a control panel; however, there are few who can integrate the control system with the combustion system.
We are specialists in industrial furnaces and their various components. Contact our expert advisers to learn more about all the solutions we have available for you.
