CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the project

Cutix Plc Nnewi, a leading manufacturer of indigenous cables, produces all kinds of cables ranging from house wiring cables to aluminum and copper conductors for high tension installation. Cutix was founded back in 1981, and started actual production in 1984. The company has many production machines which are highly durable and rugged.

A production chart of Cutix Plc Nnewi reveals that a finished product must have passed through the stages of wire drawing, first and second insulation, spark testing and the finishing (coiling and sealing) line. More critical of these is the first and second insulation stages which make use of high temperature to melt polyvinyl chloride (PVC) materials required for coating the cables. Such situation requires a given temperature to be kept stable to ensure smooth and uniform insulation. 

Cutix, like most other manufacturing industries, makes use of analog temperature controllers. Such controllers can accept thermocouple or RTD inputs and offer imprecise temperature control over a range such as 75°C to 100°C. This seemed to pose no disadvantage to them since their products still sell in the market. However, this type of controllers used by these industry, unknowingly, possess no readable display, lack of sophistication for more challenging control tasks, and no communication ability, all of which most often expose the industry to the following problems:

•   non-uniform heating rate for a point that requires more than one heating element, thus causing delay in start-up of production.

•   wastage of raw of materials in test-running the line to ensure that the temperature has reached the minimum required value.

•   poor package outlook because the sealers are not heated uniformly.      

•   extra man-power for each extrusion line- one at the take-off and another at the panel- to ensure that the machine is stopped immediately there is a sign of poor quality due to failure of one or more of the heaters.

•   frequent damage of heating elements as a result of no precision in control which often leads to over-heating the elements beyond upper temperature range.

In view of the above limitations, and more, a pc-based automatic multi-point temperature monitoring and control is hereby proposed to remove the limitations of analog controllers and even add flexibility to the control process.

Today, with the continuous price erosion and performance increase of pc, industrial control is moving from an expensive, analog proprietary hardware base to one with foundation of pc-based software. Pc-based temperature control runs on personal or industrial hardened computers and provides answers to initiatives for lean control program. 

With the inherent advantages of a pc-based control which include flexibility, high performance, customization, convenience, easier development, better integration with existing hard wares, portability and access, the proposed system should be able to help

Cutix (and other manufacturing industries) solve their problems by providing uniform  heating, precision in measurement and control, self monitoring and extension of usage to remote, inaccessible locations in the manufacturing floor.

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