Industrial control and automation can be complex. At Maple Systems, we want to break the barrier between knowledge and know-how to make sure every engineer and operator is fully prepared for whatever task comes their way.
PID tuning determines how effectively an industrial control system responds to changes in temperature, pressure, flow, and other process variables. Different tuning methods balance response speed, stability, and overshoot in different ways. This guide compares five common PID tuning methods, their engineering trade-offs, and how…
Integral windup occurs when the integral term in the PID is just continually accumulating error as the controller output or actuator hits its limit. The result is that you can end up with excessive overshoot, a very slow recovery and an unstable process. Anti-windup techniques…
Read More Preventing Integral Windup in PID Control: Anti-Windup Methods
Cascade PID is a multi-loop control strategy employing nested feedback loops to control an industrial process. It involves two controllers working in tandem, each acting on a different process variable. The outer loop is responsible for controlling the main process variable, the inner loop controls…
Read More Cascade PID Control Explained: Inner and Outer Loops
Stable PID control is predicated on accurate feedback from sensors and measuring devices. Electrical noise, sensor drift and other disturbances may all introduce noise into the process variable signal. Derivative control is very sensitive to high frequency noise as it’s a measure of the rate…
The Alliance Acelerex and Maple Systems have formed an alliance to bring industrial-grade computing to renewable energy and storage projects. Developers, IPPs, utilities and EPCs receive a pre-engineered site controller, configured and tested before delivery, that combines proven industrial hardware with a complete energy control…
Read More Acelerex Selects Maple Systems Industrial PCs as Qualified Hardware for the REX™ Platform
Understanding the PID equation helps explain how proportional, integral, and derivative settings affect a controller’s output. Engineers can also express this equation as a transfer function to analyze how the controller interacts with the process. This article explains both representations, connects them to a complete…
Proportional gain (Kp), integral gain (Ki), and derivative gain (Kd) determine how a PID controller responds to process errors. Each parameter affects response speed, accuracy, and stability. Knowing these three terms helps engineers configure a proportional-integral-derivative (PID controller to control temperature, pressure, flow, and other…
Imagine a control cabinet in which a single power supply runs a PLC, HMI, and industrial PC without difficulty during normal operation. During testing, however, the output voltage begins to drop when the IPC processes multiple images from a machine vision system. Although the connected…
Read More How to Select a DIN-Rail Power Supply for an Industrial Control Panel
For years, enterprises treated digital signage media players as an afterthought. Specifically, many chose shortcuts by repurposing obsolete office desktop towers or deploying cheap consumer-grade PCs to drive their digital signage displays. However, while this approach seemed cost-effective on paper, it inevitably triggered severe commercial…
Read More Why Industrial Digital Signage Demands Purpose-Built Hardware
Digital Signage is the “Communication Nerve System” of the factory. While an Andon station is a specific tool for a specific problem, digital signage is the broad platform that keeps everyone on the same page. In most factories, front-line workers are focused on the line…
Read More Digital Signage in Manufacturing: From Information to Action
Imagine you’re planning the digital signs to put up in your store. You want a digital signage PC connected to several screens to display synchronized promotional animations and featured product announcements, with content that automatically rotates on a schedule. You start diving deep into various…
Read More Digital Signage PCs: Media Players for Multi-Display and 24/7 Signage
Imagine you’re the general manager of a busy quick service restaurant (QSR). Several digital displays show your menu, and they’re scheduled to switch automatically from breakfast to lunch. The right digital signage PC for menu boards should help coordinate this content and keep it running…
Read More Digital Signage PCs for QSR and Restaurant Menu Boards