Institutional

Door Control for County Correctional Facility in Central PA

Challenge:

This facility suffered from an improperly designed and unfinished door control system.

Solution:

Our team performed an evaluation of the system to locate problems. Based on our evaluation, we found and corrected numerous Wonderware development issues, as well as wiring prolems. We updated their software and ensured the client had properly licensed software and hardware, and software backups of everything. We aided in the troubleshooting and repair of the cell doors in conjunction with prison maintenance. We improved the Ethernet infrastructure to the cell blocks and command center, and fixed problems with the failover of the GE redundant PLC system. Finally, we surveyed the entire system and created and provided electrical drawings for the client.

Lab Vehicle VFD Upgrade

Challenge:

The test vehicle is made up of 4 axle wheel assemblies on each corner of the vehicle, and each wheel has a motor with 16 motors in total. Each set of 4 motors (one assembly) is controlled by a 300HP VFD operating in multi-motor mode. The flanged mounted VFDs were becoming obsolete, and their cooling fans were failing because of their exposure to a dirty outdoor environment.

Solution:

We updated the VFDs, converted the flanged drives to non-flanged drives and incorporated dynamic braking for faster stopping. We also adding encoder feedback for each of the 4 assemblies, updated the PLC and HMI, and improved the overall performance by implementing vector-like controls and faster communications between the PLC and VFDs. Our team built 20 new control panels for the 4 VFDs and the 16 dynamic brake resistors. We added encoders to 3 axes, installed and programmed new PLCs, and configured, tuned, and calibrated the VFDs. All of the hardware used was Mitsubishi.