With over 50 items in its product basket, the Nexto Series offers solutions that provide safety and high productivity for the most varied demands of national and international industry. After launching the CLP XP340, a model of the Nexto Xpress solution with WebServer support, Altus' traditional family of programmable controllers now gains a new item to add even more connectivity to your applications. Meet the NX6014, the new analog input module with HART!
The new member of the Nexto Series has 08 individually configurable analog current inputs with support for the HART communication protocol. Through them, it is possible to read signals from field instruments responsible for controlling process variables such as pressure, temperature, flow, among others. These signals carry important data for measuring the useful life of the instruments, information used by asset management systems to predict future failures and schedule maintenance actions before potential problems occur.
Check out the I&A Blog for an article we prepared aboutwhat the HART protocol is and what it is for.
Asset management systems
Asset management is a powerful tool that allows, among other actions, reading process variables, obtaining diagnostics, parameterizing and calibrating field instruments. With this tool, it is possible to predict failures based on information stored in the asset history, which means that the maintenance team can act on the cause (predictive maintenance) and not just on the effect (corrective maintenance). This is extremely important, as maintenance can be planned without the need for production shutdowns.
In order for the management system – installed on a computer connected to the automation network – to receive and process the data collected by the NX6014 module from the field instruments, it is necessary to use a communication standard compatible with market standards. The technology chosen to be used by the new HART module of the Nexto Series was the Device Type Manager (DTM), an open architecture standard created by a conglomerate of companies in 2009. This system allows instrument and PLC manufacturers to develop “drivers” that act in the communication between the asset management tools and the equipment in the field.
Click here to download the article ASSET MANAGEMENT APPLIED ON OIL PLATFORM.
How to use the NX6014 module
For the NX6014 to be used in an automation application and configured in an asset management system, two points must be taken into account:
- The module is capable of operating in racks that have a Nexto Series CPU, therefore, it must be connected directly to an NX3003, NX3004, NX3005, NX3010, NX3020 or NX3030 unit;
- It is also necessary to install the communication program that contains the model's DTM libraries, available for download from the Altus website.
In the process, the module collects data from field instruments and interprets the received HART signals, converts them to the DTM standard and redirects them to the CPU installed in the rack. Upon receiving the information, the CPU uses its Ethernet interface connected to the network to transmit the information to the computer where the asset management system is installed. To process this data correctly, in addition to having the NX6014 DTM software installed, the management system will also need the libraries of each of the instruments monitored in the field.
