Constanta Vaga specialists developed, manufactured and commissioned a control system (hereinafter referred to as CS) for a feed mixture preparation plant.

The result of the development was a modern electronic system for preparing feed mixture, during which all product data is stored in non-volatile memory and transferred to a personal computer with specialized software. It is possible to control the production process and edit recipes for manufacturing the required product.

The control system provides the ability to manually and automatically control the actuators that are part of the installation for preparing the feed mixture.

When operating in automatic mode, the control system performs the following functions:

• Automatic loading of components into the weighing hopper;
• Automatic accounting of components loaded into the weighing bin;
• Automatic unloading of the weigh hopper;
• Automatic control of the hopper damper of the first crusher and the hopper damper of the second crusher.

The control system includes a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as PC), on which specialized software is installed.

The PC communicates with the dosing controller using an automatic USB/RS485 converter. All other electronic equipment of the control system for preparing the feed mixture is mounted in an electrical installation cabinet with a degree of protection IP54.

All manual controls and light alarms are located on the front panel of the cabinet.

The cabinet is installed in the operator’s room. A PC with software for recording and downloading recipes is installed at a short distance from the control cabinet.

The weighing controller KV4, developed by ConstantaWeight, was used as a dispenser.

The controller accumulates and stores the total dosing results:

• total mass consumption of each component;
• total mass of the mixture of each recipe;
• number of doses used for each recipe.

At the completion of each dispensing cycle, the total results are updated (incomplete cycles are not taken into account) and saved in non-volatile memory, so this data is not lost when the power is turned off.

To carry out repair and maintenance work, a manual operating mode is provided.

When operating the control system with a PC, it is possible to block the start of the cycle of automatic dosing of components if the PC is not turned on and the control software is not running. During startup blocking, the “PC” indicator lights up.

PC software is designed to facilitate the work of the feed mixture production technologist. It allows you to create and load mixture recipes into the memory of the dosing controller included in the control system, print technological maps, and also keep track of component consumption.

In the event of a short-term absence of 220V supply voltage, the CS weight controller is switched to battery power. When power is restored, the automatic dispensing cycle returns to the current step. In the event of a prolonged power failure, the operator must press the “Stop” key and turn off the power to the control cabinet (if the loading cycle is not completed, the weight of the loaded components will not be saved).