Grass seed mix is a batching of multiple ingredients, typically including the seed, fertilizer and wood fiber or crumbles. Sterling Systems & Controls was asked to provide engineering services to a seed processor for the batching and transfer of ingredients and mixed products. Engineering services for seed industry applications fall under our product category of Controls & Automation.
Usually Sterling Systems engineers and manufactures the control panels that incorporate electronic automation hardware as well as software for the applications involved. In this case, the end user provided the control panels, PLC (Allen Bradley), and scale hardware. In providing the engineering services for seed industry applications like this, Sterling Systems was contracted to provide the software engineering, technical engineering writing, process control engineering, test and check out and the onsite start-up services as well.
The basic engineering services included:
- Equipment List
- Associated Input / Output details (Type and Voltage)
- Sequence of Operation
- Surge Hopper Refilling with enable/disable
- Set-point Batching at each scale/mixer, and single ingredient
- PLC programming per flow diagram and discussions
- PanelView+ (PV+) programming per flow diagram (for both PV+7 and PV+15)
In addition, Sterling Systems’ WebCentral remote supervisory control software application was also provided. WebCentral is a browser-based supervisory control application that allows you to remotely access the database of a Sterling Systems control system. It allows you to do things like add or remove ingredients, create and manage recipes, manage ingredient and product inventories, set up a batching schedule, and review and print historical reports in a batching control system. Because WebCentral is browser-based, it is very simple and intuitive to use. This also means that WebCentral can be accessed by virtually any computer that is networked with the Sterling Systems batching or other type of control system, without having to install any software, other than a web browser.
Working With Us
Give us a call today to talk about your business and process objectives and see how Sterling Systems & Controls can provide a custom engineered solution. You can reach us by phone at 1-815-625-0852, toll-free in the USA 1-800-257-7214, or by email at sci@sterlingcontrols.com.