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Protim Solignum (part of the Osmose Group) specialise in the treatment of timber using white spirit and water based preservatives. The process involves immersing timber in a treatment tank under different conditions of vacuum and pressure, to force solution into the wood.
Prior to JCS's involvement, the control was achieved using either a PLC or a Uniselector driving a bank of LED's indicating process state.
Protim had a wealth of in house knowledge of their process but lacked the internal engineering skills to introduce a graphical interface to the system.
In 1996 JCS were commissioned by Protim to re-engineer the control of the plant to introduce the visual elements of the new design. After two months working closely with the Protim engineers sufficient information was obtained to produce the first live code.
Protim's customers were immediately responsive to the revised XL450 control approach. There then followed 18 months of site reworks to introduce the graphical system to existing hardware in the field.
Although revisions of the on site code were introduced to bring out extended features to satisfy different customer requirements the first plant had been running the original code daily between July '96. In July 1999 the site was upgraded for a PC based control system, again developed by JCS. The PC based system is known as the WorkNet system.
A key part of the both the WorkNet and the XL450 system requirement was to be able to control a process plant remotely from Protim's head offices in Marlow, Bucks. This enables the Protim engineers to fault find at a distance. This feature was particularly benificial when Protim was upgrading plants oversea's.
JCS was able to minimise cabling by introducing the JT163 Dual Channel RS232/422 Converter and the JT171 PLC interface unit. Both of these units were designed specifically for the XL450 application.
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