Human Machine Interface (HMI)

Larger screen size seems to be the trend these days. Bigger screens allow more information to be displayed to the operator and increases the user friendliness of the control system. Decide if your application is for simple operator control or will it be a gateway for your production information? Popular sizes are 7”, 10” and 15”. We are also seeing more demands for bigger screens of up to 21”.

Although this is often overlook when selecting HMI, the difference can be felt by the operator. Nobody wants to use a sluggish smart phone where it takes time to load an application or respond to your touch. Industrial HMI are the same as well. A well built and advance HMI offers faster speed over its low cost counterpart. Many years ago, we have a customer that achieve an increase yield of 25% in the production line when they migrated to a faster processing model.

There will come a time when a migration is required due to obsolete products.Choosing a HMI that offers a simple migration plan when this happen can help you to reduce additional engineering cost in the future. Being the market leader in HMI, we have migrated many obsolete Pro-face HMI thru out the years. Migration is offered from the first generation to the latest model. Our customers benefited from fast replacement and do not have to worry about re-engineering cost. Re-engineering usually bring in some form of risk to the existing operation. So do check with your current supplier if the HMI that you are currently using can be migrated without engineering?

Touch panel is like a smart phone these days. You can’t tell the difference in build, quality, reliability and capability by just looking on the physical hardware itself. When choosing a HMI, be sure to understand the features that are provided in the package. Some of the trending features these days are:

• Ability to connect to a remote client via apps or web browser
• Connectivity to factory database for data storage and traceability
• Ability to add in IO expansion within the touch panel and build in ladder programming or codesys support
• Statistical calculation
• Be sure to explore more of these features when selecting the next HMI for your project

Every machine encounters some downtime in their operating life. Having a HMI that offers good reliability can ensure that your machine can run 24/7. Be sure that the HMI is from a reputable specialist with many years of experience in manufacturing. Seek out additional option to enhance the lifetime of your HMI. There are models that are able to withstand high temperature, high vibration as well as special coated model for installation in corrosive and dusty environments. For example, the tire industry specifically requires coated model to prevent damages to the electronic board due to the presence of sulphur in the environment. We also have customer that require high temperature rating for project delivery to middle east countries.