DrumTronic
Asphalt Drum Plant Automation & Control
Designed from the ground up with the Operator's priorities, DrumTronic brings asphalt plants to a new level of extremely fine tuned automation and control through an intuitive user interface and dedicated hardware.
Request More Info" We have been using Minds products for many years and their automation software equips now five of our six plants. We even specified them to provide the control system on the latest two Astec plants we acquired. They are very responsive and have easily incorporated our requests in their products. I would recommend them to anyone who wants a fine control of their production process. "
John Sullivan K-Five Construction Corporation, Chicago, IL
DrumTronic Highlights
State of the art
Dependable, accurate, reliable, and customizable. DrumTronic is ideal for a simple bitumen and aggregates blending-only application, or comprehensive total plant control. Its software adaptability is paired with a modular hardware design made of one or many of the same electronic I/Os board. It comes with an industrial grade PC, security and redundancy, remote access and support. It is complemented with Android and Apple apps and a beautiful graphic signature. Did we say it is very reliable? It is Drumtronic and it gives you the control and the peace of mind.
Multiple options for multi-screen setups
Clearly See Your Operations
The human interface has been thoroughly designed in collaboration with actual operators. The layout of information allows for a quick understanding of the overall workings. Delays and timing, for example, are displayed over a graphic representation of material flow and plant layout. These types of details help to prevent errors and misinterpretation. Large arrays of numbers are avoided, in favor of clear symbolic information.
Always In Control
The operator remains in control and the process can be stopped and resumed anytime while direct control of motors is always possible. The software can control silo storage, including complex conveying layouts, ensuring a clean and precise change of silo following a mix change. For combo or hybrid asphalt plants requiring management of towers, individual batches, and large drum mixes, MINDS has solutions to visualize your operation for ultimate control. See the BatchTronic product page for more information on batch plant control. Our automation software can also be linked to Tessera Single Site (and Tessera Enterprise, coming soon) so managers can see a high level overview of totals, consumption and inventory usage.
DrumTronic Quick Tour
Feeder Screen
This layout configuration has the plant and bitumen tanks.
Loadout Screen
Separate loadout screen. Can be on the same PC workstation as the plant or independent.
Combo Feeder Screen
This layout configuration shows the plant, the burner control and storage silos.
DrumTronic in action
DrumTronic Specifications
Cold Feed Bins
- Up to 30 feeders, volumetric or weight, with or without encoder feedback, loader signaling light, material flow sensor and optic bin level sensor, vibrator control.
- Calibrated with up to 30 materials with main aggregate beltscale or truck, wet or dry calibration curves, archivable and printable calibration report with linearity graph with up to 10 points per feeder/material couple.
- Feeders run either in auto on user adjustable PID speed or flow control loops, or in manual with an operator adjustable set point for feeder emptying or manual override.
- LoaderSupportTM application on Android and Apple, tablets and smartphones gives the loader operator real time relevant information about current mix, next mix, currently used feeders, flow sensors, etc..
Belt Scales
- Up to 10 Belt scales: Virgin Aggregate and RAP plus 8 auxiliary belts
- Flow monitoring from direct flow signal or calculated via speed times weight
- Up to 4 fully automated and configurable calibration points per belt scale
- Fully automated and configurable belt scale tare procedure
- Multi-level calibration backup/restore with archived, viewable and printable reports
Asphalt
- Up to 3 asphalt product lines and 20 asphalt product materials
- Volumetric type, with or without encoder feedback or mass flow signal type
- Automatic or manual material density calculations for volumetric systems
- Single/double encoder inputs for pump/meter correlation and backup
- Asphalt material flow detection
- Analog or increase/decrease pump control
- Calibration procedure for each pump/meter combination with simultaneous calibration of the asphalt meter and pump for redundant or backup control
- Fully automated procedure with archived calibration reports
- Asphalt pumps run either in auto on user adjustable PID flow control loops, or in manual with an operator adjustable set point for material emptying or manual override
Filler
- Up to 4 independent mineral filler lines and 10 filler materials
- Additional single re-circulated bag house dust line
- Volumetric type, with or without encoder feedback
- Mass flow through weight depletion vessel
- Analog or increase/decrease control
- Given proper equipment we can calculate bag house dust removal flow and adjust belt scale flow accordingly for a better production control.
Exhaust Fan Damper - Burner
- Automatic through dryer negative pressure or manually controlled
- Analog or increase/decrease damper control
- Complete manual or automatic burner damper control (Optional)
- Selectable burner temperature reference, exhaust gases or materials
- Burner damper runs either in auto on user adjustable PID flow control loops or in manual with an operator adjustable damper opening
- Analog or increase/decrease control
- Note: Burner system must have a separate/external customer supplied flame security interface.
Production Controls
- Configurable automatic conveying motors start/stop sequence
- Configurable production motors start/stop sequence
- Configurable hot start/stop sequence
- Mix changes with operator set mix timer
- Custom production screen adapted to reflect your plant
- Damped production rate change to prevent instability
- All elements accessible for on-screen operation
Information Available
- Unlimited Alarm historical log
- Production totals and daily total compiled from actual material flows
- Flexible report design tool allows for user adapted reports
- Production inventories and material usage reports
- Calibration reports
- Real-time material flows and production rates
- Motor currents (given proper signals)
- Conveying element status (given proper signals)
System and User Interface
- 3D graphical user Interface representing actual plant configuration
- Industrial plant computer running Windows® with RTX real-time subsystem
- I/O modules through 10/100Mb Ethernet on a TCP/IP based protocol
- Each industrial module (XIO) has the capacity to acquire: 64 Logic Inputs, 32 Logic Outputs, 12 Analog Inputs (4 on base and two 4 inputs extension boards) featuring multi-range self calibrating from 20mV to 10VDC (0-20, 4- 20mAdc external supply), 6 Analog 0-10V output (2 on base and two 2 output extension boards), 6/12 High speed counting inputs (Quad/Single)
- System is easily customized through multi-level user accessible parameters
XIO Controller
Dedicated hardware for inputs & outputs
All the electrical inputs and outputs of our plant control systems are handled through one or many instances of a single type of electronic board: The XIO. A small batch plant requires just a single one while a very large drum plant may require upwards of 5 boards. Employing one type of I/O board means there is just one model to manufacture, stock, maintain and support. We have deployed 1000s of them at 100s of plants on 4 continents. Learn more on our XIO Controller product page.
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