Case Study
Project objective
The installed system controls the opening and closing movements of the upper and lower hatches of the dome containing the Telescope.
There are four motors for each gate, two on each side. The upper damper needs at least 3 of them to perform the movements while the lower damper moves with one motor on each side, having two main and two reserve motors.
There are 2 redundant PLCs and 2 redundant power supplies so that they can be easily and quickly replaced in the event of failure of the equipment.
Basically, the operation is carried out from an operation panel, being able to perform synchronized or independent movements.
There is also a manual movement from the control panel for emergency situations.
The system is based on Siemens hardware and software:
- Control system: Simotion / Sinamics.
- Display system: Comfort Panel 19" and WinCC RT Advanced.
- Programming software: Simotion Scout for PLC control and TIA Portal for visualization.
- Control networks: Profinet and Profibus.
- Control redundancy through dual Simotion CPUs and dual power supplies.
- Fewer motors to open the gate, so less maintenance.
- More speed in opening and closing the gates. These operations now require less time.
- It reduces the risk of possible failures.
- The windshield works properly. Improved maintenance and better quality in strong winds.