When asked to define just what Product in Development (PID) control theory is, Cory Estes, owner of Infuse Solutions LLC, used an analogy of a simple thermostat. “You set a temperature and the room ...

Hot glue guns are pretty simple beasts: there’s an on/off switch, a heating element, and a source of current, be it battery or wired. You turn it on, and the heater starts warming up; ...

Stabilizing an inverted pendulum is a classic problem in control theory, and if you’ve ever taken a control systems class you might remember seeing pages full of differential equations and bode ...

In the nearly 40 years since electronic control systems first became common features of industrial machines, controls theory has necessarily evolved to keep pace with machine design. Early on, systems ...

Self-regulating systems with feedback loops, i.e., the routing back of the output of a system to its input, have existed since antiquity and have since become an integral part of modern technology.

Machines and processes are controlled using many strategies, from simple ladder logic to custom algorithms for specialized process control, but proportional-integral-derivative (PID) is the most ...

A temperature controller is an instrument that controls temperatures, often without extensive operator involvement. In a temperature controller system, the controller accepts a temperature sensor as ...

Plant engineers and technicians are frequently asked to tune the controller when a control loop’s process value has prolonged or significant excursions from the set point. But in many instances, no ...