Design and implementation of a control system for a steel plate cutting production line using programmable logic controller

Most of the old machines installed in different industries are managed manually by system operators. This action makes their productivity low and not suitable to cover the needs in other sectors. In addition, these machines are not without risks due to the proximity of the operators to them. The installing a new full system instead of the old one on the same site requires very high costs. So, modernizing the same old system by making its operation automatic has become necessary to reduce the economic cost significantly. In this paper, an automatic control system based on programmable logic controller (PLC) for the cutting steel plate machine that had been managed manually in a factory is designed. The system includes an Encoder that is used to specify the length of the steel plate to be cut by sending a signal to the PLC. The system operation is completed by using human machine interface (HMI) unit to monitor and control the system performance by the system operator. A practical test for the developed system offered more productivity (more than 30%), more safety, reduces human efforts and the total daily production cost (less than one third)