A Solution that Saves

The paper and pulp industry is one of the largest industries in the world. The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of pulp for paper and is the second largest consumer of paper and paperboard worldwide. Clearwater Paper^®, in Spokane, Washington, is one of the premier suppliers of private brand tissue to major retailers and bleached paperboard to the printing and packaging industries.

Their plant had Allen-Bradley legacy MicroLogix Controllers running their processes and the company was unable to connect a computer to any of these older units. The Process Control team needed a speed signal transferred to the controllers but had no ability to bring those signals in without replacing the controllers all together.

“We were looking at upgrading the controllers for ten units,” said Dennis Cahill of the Process Control team. “Ten new controllers would be not only be costly, they would require considerable wiring and staff hours to get up and running. I have been using RTA products to solve some very complex solutions in the plant, so I reached out to them to see if they had a better solution.”

Real Time Automation’s 515RTAENI is a replacement for the Allen-Bradley 1761-NET-ENI. It features browser-based configuration and diagnostics, support for up to six TCP/IP connections in each direction and it exposes additional data transfer options the original never allowed. With most of the same features as the original, the 515RTAENI allows you to keep processes and systems running without missing a beat.

“RTA’s 515RTAENI provided network connection from any computer in our plant and it enabled us to transfer the analog speed signals to our aging controllers,” Cahill said. “All we had to do was connect a premade cable from the RTA unit to our controller and then wire 24vdc to the unit, which was already available through the existing controllers. There was no need to buy new controllers and rewire the entire ten units, which would have been costly and would have required a significant number of staff hours. Best of all, there was no downtime. Everything was done live. It was the perfect solution.”

Real Time Automation has been delivering innovative communications solutions to the industrial automation market since 1989. RTA products seamlessly integrate process equipment so control engineers and integrators can collect, analyze and interpret the real-time data needed to improve productivity and maximize efficiencies.

RTA specializes in making easy-to-use connectivity products, including industrial protocol gateways, embedded source code stacks and customized OEM solutions. RTA’s products are used on factory floors all over the world and come backed by industry-leading Enginerd® tech support to help save time, money and aggravation. And, RTA products come with a 5-year warranty, are made in America and are always in stock, ready to ship the same day (with orders placed before 2:00 PM CST).