Problem

The instrumentation engineers at a large Chicago steel manufacturing plant were faced with a monitoring dilemma: how to get a one analog signal from their tin mill to a control room just under a thousand feet away. Not a simple task, since the two were connected by a maze of physical obstructions -- moving overhead equipment, pipes, beams, racks, and worse...

Problem

A busy concrete pumping contractor in Gardena, California owned and operated 100 pump trucks, which he often had in action at the same time in dense urban environments. Each truck was equipped with both wired and fixed frequency wireless control solutions. But neither system proved effective for the pump truck operators. The fixed frequency radio signals that wirelessly controlled the pumps would drop off as radio traffic congestion increased in...

Problem

A taconite pellet manufacturing plant in Minnesota needed a reliable, easy to maintain radio control system to ensure product was safely and efficiently loaded into trucks for transport.

The problem was that the manufacturing process at such a plant is complex and dangerous. First, taconite ore is drilled and blasted from a large open pit and ground down to a fine powder. The powder is then milled for iron which is...

Problem

An optical lens manufacturer needed to monitor and control two valves using an Allen-Bradley Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), but two issues were hampering the project. First, although both valves sat only a short distance -- 100 feet -- away from the PLC, walls, pipes, and other obstructions were in the way, making...

| More...

Problem

At a railway yard in North Carolina, workers were struggling with a dirty and dangerous job --cleaning up materials that spilled from railway cars as they passed in and out of the yard. To get the task done, an operator spent hours walking in front of a 135-ton mobile cleaning machine, controlling two large trenching scoops (used for picking up rubbish) through a short cable connected to the machine. The dust and debris that was...

| More...