| The Alcoa Aluminium Plate plant in Kitts Green, Birmingham specialises in producing precision heat-treated metal for use in aircraft wings all over the world. The plant - which was originally owned by Alcan and after that by British Aluminium - has a full complement of heat treatment specialists and on-site metallurgists, such is the specification of the metal which the plant produces. Throughout these changes of ownership, they have entrusted this most critical of processes to Alphr Telemetry's NUCLEUS Scada package. | |
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Nucleus runs on a standard PC and interfaces directly to furnace
instrumentation. Various industry standard protocols are supported such as
Eurotherm Bi-Sync, Modbus and Allen Bradley DF1. Nucleus assumes full control during all stages of the heat treatment process. The metal must undergo a rigorous treatment program in specialist furnaces, with processes lasting up to 48 hours, throughout which temperatures in the furnaces must be kept to +/- 1 degree C. |
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Nucleus in currently in its second incarnation - NucleusTwo - and is shortly to become NucleusIII. Currently it controls 18 furnaces on the site using the on-site Ethernet and Fibre-Optic networks and is currently an integral part of the most recent multi-million pound furnace project undertaken for Alcoa by the German company Junker. | |