BHP asked ICON Technologies to provide on-going maintenance and support for three PC-based machine control systems in their Port Headland Ore Car Repair workshop. These systems were implemented using National Instruments I/O hardware and LabVIEW software, and were originally supplied to BHP by a third-party supplier from outside Western Australia.
Requirements included system diagnostics and troubleshooting, plus re-installation or re-configuration of systems, and application code modifications, as needed.
All three systems implement the same general SCADA-like architecture. A conventional PLC handles low-speed I/O. A PC-based LabVIEW application handles high-speed I/O, and acts as the HMI to the complete system.
Although this architecture was appropriate at the time of the original installation, a simpler and more reliable solution today would be to implement all system functions on a single PAC device. A proposal to upgrade the original systems from PC/PLC-based to PAC-based is currently under consideration.
NI PCI-6035E and PCI-6602 DAQ boards, NI DAQ/NI DAQmx, LabVIEW
