Allen-Bradley SLC 500 series PLC System

A newer model of PLC manufactured by Allen-Bradley is  the  SLC 500 series  (often  verbally referred to as the “Slick 500”), which is also modular in design like the older PLC-5 system, although the racks and modules of the SLC 500 design are more compact. The SLC 500 rack shown in the next photograph has 7 “slots” for processor and I/O cards to plug in to, numbered 0 through 6 (left to right):

The first three slots of this particular SLC 500 rack (0, 1, and 2) are occupied by the processor card, an analog input  card, and a discrete input  card, respectively.  The slots 3 and 4 are empty (revealing the backplane circuit board and connectors for accepting new cards). The slots 5 and 6 hold discrete output and analog output cards, respectively.

A feature visible on all cards in this system are numerous LED indicators, designed to show the status of each card. The processor card has LED indicators for “Run” mode, “Fault” conditions, “Force”  conditions  (when either  input  or output  bits  have been forced into  certain  states  by the human programmer for testing  purposes), and communication  network indicators.   Each discrete I/O card has indicator LEDs showing the on/off status of each I/O bit, and the analog card has a single LED showing that the card is powered.

A nine-slot SLC 500 system is shown in the next photograph,  controlling a high-purity water treatment system for a biopharmaceuticals manufacturing facility. As you can see in this photograph, not all slots in this particular rack are occupied by I/O cards either:

Some of the inputs to this PLC include water level switches, pressure switches, water flow meters, and conductivity meters (to measure the purity of the water, greater electrical conductivity indicating the presence of more dissolved minerals, which is undesirable in this particular process application). In turn,  the  PLC controls  the  starting  and stopping  of water  pumps and the  switching  of water valves to manage the water purification and storage processes.


Article from Lessons In Industrial Instrumentation by Tony R. Kuphaldt – under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License

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