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Software for automation control and monitoring of
the manufacturing process for spherical mirrors

Objectives

The objective was to develop a custom designed software solution for the purpose of monitoring and automation control of the manufacturing process in the mirror factory "Ogledala" - Struga. The project was conducted by the hardware development company ELTOS - Skopje (web site not available), which developed the microcontrollers and the specifications for the communication protocol between the microcontrollers and the software.

Application/system description:

When the application starts, it first establishes communication through the serial port, with the microcontrollers connected to the machines. The application was developed for the monitoring and automation control of the following four machines:

1. Stove for creation of sphere
2. Stove for stabilization of sphere
3. Line for silver coating
4. Station for waste water

The software allows the user to define the parameters for the machines, such as: the technological limits of the: temperature in the stove for creation of sphere (upper and lower zone); the critical values for alarm notification; the limits of the temperature in the sensors located in the dryer (three zones) from the line for silver coating; the temperature of the deionized water, the silver nitrate and the reductor; the limits for the pH value of the waste water, etc. There are also indicators for the state of the actuators, the speed of the manufacturing track, etc..

The GUI of the application is divided in four zones:

• main menu
• panel for quick switching between the four machine screens
• status information for the communication with the peripheral devices
• the screen for the machine that is being monitored

There are three main options:

• Monitoring
• Administration
• Report publishing

The Monitoring option is used for switching between the screens for the machines.

The Administration option is used for user administration and creating backup copies of the results from the measurement process. The sub-option called Users can be used for adding more users of the application in the system. Each user can be given different rights and restrictions, and later these can be also modified by the administrator.

The application offers many text and graphical reports. Each report is generated upon the parameters entered by the user. These parameters include the time period for which the report is created, and the minimum and maximum values from the scale.

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