Watlow at Advanced Manufacturing

Watlow designs and manufactures industrial heaters, temperature sensors, controllers, system assemblies and software – a complete thermal system. The company has 12 manufacturing facilities in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia and sales offices in 17 countries worldwide.

They are introducing the EZ-ZONE® RM – a configurable multi-loop temperature/process controller. The EZ-ZONE RM is the first industrial controller to integrate an entire assembly of control loop functionality in one space-saving, DIN-rail mounted package.

EZ-ZONE RM can be used as a PID temperature/process controller, an over/under limit controller or these functions can be combined into an integrated controller. Other control functions can be integrated as well, such as high amperage power controller output, creating a complete and integrated thermal loop controller all in one package.

EZ-ZONE RM can be configured with between 1 to 16 modules controlling from 1 to 64 loops. Because the controller is single-loop scalable, customers pay only for what they need – exact loop count.

Utilizing an integrated controller solution reduces wiring time and termination complexity, improves overall system reliability, reduces termination and installation costs and eliminates compatibility issues encountered when using many different components and brands. In addition, integrated controllers reduce troubleshooting time and downtime costs since the system can specifically identify to the operator if there are any problems with a sensor, controller, solid state relay (SSR) power output or heater load.

EZ-ZONE RM allows for many optional integrated controller functions to be combined together or ordered in different quantities, including:

• PID temperature/process controller;
• Over/under temperature limit control loops;
• 10 or 15 ampere power output/heater driver options;
• On-board data logging;
• Current measurement input;
• Sequencer start up and control function;
• Programmable timer and counter functions;
• Programmable math and logic options;
• Multiple communication protocol options;
• Mobile configuration with removable secure digital flash card
• SPLIT-RAIL™ configuration to isolate low voltage input modules from high voltage output modules.

EZ-ZONE RM offers current monitoring for the entire system, on-board data logging, sensor back-up capability and TRU-TUNE®+ adaptive control, which provides tighter control for demanding applications. Its communications capabilities feature a range of protocol choices including USB (Universal Serial Bus) device port, EtherNet/IP™, Modbus® RTU, Modbus® TCP, DeviceNet™ and PROFIBUS making integration to a larger PLC based system architecture seamless.

As part of the EZ-ZONE family of integrated PID controllers there is no need to learn a new menu flow or wiring and connection scheme because the EZ-ZONE RM shares a common user interface, menu structure, wiring and connector labeling and user manual support documentation with its other family members (EZ-ZONE PM and EZ-ZONE ST).

This new rail mount integrated multi-loop controller is ideal for semiconductor processing, photovoltaic, packaging, plastics processing and a variety of other applications that require multi-loop control.