Motrona AX350 Product Review
The Motrona AX350 Touchmatrix display, is a feature rich and powerful indicator for analog signals. It is one of our ‘go to’ displays just because it is so flexible.
There are some features that make it stand out from many other panel meters you may come across:
- Touchscreen. This gives it a high level of flexibility making it suitable for many applications.
- Multicolour backlight; RED, GREEN, AMBER. This is useful for quickly and clearly determining an alarm status.
- Dual 16-bit analogue input channels and 3 control inputs.
Scratch the surface, and you will find a couple more powerful functions, which is where this display really shines:
- Linearisation
- Totalisation
These functions can be set up in the AX350 either through the touch screen, or by connecting the AX350 to a PC and configuring it through the Motrona software OS10.0.
The basic menu structure is as follows:
Linearisation
The linearisation function of AX350 allows you to convert a linear input signal into a non-linear range.
Application example:
Displaying the volume of liquid held in a non-symmetrical tank, with a pressure sensor mounted to the bottom of the tank.
The analogue pressure signal measured is proportional to the filling level (in mm), but it is not representative of the volume of liquid.
The AX350’s Linearisation feature can achieve this.
This is accomplished by using up to 24 programmable x/y coordinates available for each analog input, which can be set in any desired distance over the full conversion range.
The AX350 uses linear interpolation between two coordinates. Therefore, it is advisable to use more coordinates in a range with strong curves and only a few coordinates where the curvature is less.
In the above example, the registers P01_x through to P15 _x are set up in the AX350 by entering an appropriate value that is representative of the Volume rather than the Level.
Totalisation
The Totalisation function gives the accumulation of a particular quantity based on a given rate of change.
Think of a container getting filled due to the flow of water, with a flow meter giving an analogue output corresponding to the flow rate (e.g. 300L/second).
With the totalisation function, you can track the Volume of water in the container.
It will continuously add up incremental amounts per incremental periods of time such that after 1 second, the accumulated value = 300L. Then, after another second, the accumulated value = 600L and so on and so forth.
This accumulation is dependent not only on the numerical value of the “flow” (i.e., 300L, or whatever the display value is on the AX350), but also on the time base (i.e., “/second”).
In the AX350, the time base can be set as “seconds”, “minutes”, “hours”, or “command”.
The 4 parameters that can be set for the Totalisation of each analogue input are:
- TIME BASE
- DIVIDER
- DECIMAL POINT
- SCALE UNITS
Conclusion
As you can see, the Motrona AX350 panel mount display offers much more than many other panel meters on the market.
Its high degree of flexibility means that it can be used in many applications.
This is a big benefit to system integrators and industrial equipment automation suppliers, who can stock just one panel mount display that can be used in any project that they may be asked to work on.
For further information please contact PCA Encoders.