The Engineering Division of Conrad Kacsik Instrument Systems recently completed a plant-wide control-system upgrade for Modern Industries, a Pennsylvania-based commercial heat treater. The project consisted of the replacement of the legacy controls on over 30 furnaces and pieces of equipment within the facility. This included vacuum furnaces, integral-quench lines, tempers, nitriders, cast belts and generators. All of the upgraded equipment is now encompassed within a plant-wide supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system.

The system is comprised of Honeywell HC 900 controllers and control station operator interfaces for logic and process control, as well as Specview HMI (human machine interface) software for centralized furnace supervision and data collection. The individual control stations are capable of storing over 200 days of data, and Specview allows all of this information to be archived to a server on the plant-wide network.

The combination control station/Specview HMI package delivers a redundant control and data-acquisition system that eliminates the possibility of data loss. The system also enables remote access for Conrad Kacsik’s Engineering Team to provide assistance with control scheme changes, problem diagnostics and general system maintenance and support.