INSTRUMENTATION
COURSE 510: 3 DAYS
This course covers the key aspects of current instrumentation and process control technology and is designed to enable maintenance personnel to carry out commissioning, calibration and maintenance of the typical devices used for measurement and control in industrial systems.
PARTICIPANTS
The course is ideal for those who presently possess some electrical knowledge, work in a maintenance environment and seek to expand their activities to include process control and instrumentation systems.
COURSE PRESENTATION
The course is extensively ‘hands on’, giving participants considerable practical experience of the devices typically found in industry. Comprehensive course notes are provided.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
On completion of the course, participants will be able to
- understand the health and safety implications of working with process control systems
- appreciate the operation of typical instrumentation systems
- identify the various methods of signal transmission
- correctly connect electrical or air-powered devices
- understand the equipment used in
- Temperature measurement (RTDs, thermocouples, etc)
- Pressure measurement (air / electrical differential pressure cells)
- Level measurement (bubblers, pressure cells, ultrasonic, load cells)
- Flow measurement (orifice plates, mag-flow meters, weirs, flumes, etc)
- correctly connect, commission and maintain these devices and their associated wiring
- understand the principles of turbidity, density, pH, proximity and weight measurement and apply relevant maintenance procedures required by each
- commission and calibrate I to P converters, chart recorders and process meters.
Successful completion of the course leads to the award of Amicus / Technical Training Solutions competence certificate 510: Instrumentation.
This course is particularly suitable for our on-site consolidation scheme, which enables candidates to practice their newly acquired skills in the workplace. For more information on the scheme, please contact us.
What do candidates on the instrumentation course actually do?
The instrumentation course involves an extensive understanding of current loops and the devices typically found on them. Candidates look in detail at the devices used to measure temperature, pressure, level and flow, and briefly at control valves, load cells, turbidity, density and pH.
The course notes are quite extensive and explain how the various devices are used, without getting involved in the underlying theory. For example, we would look in detail at what signals a thermocouple produces, but only very briefly at how it works. Some sample pages from the course notes give an indication of this approach, the following pages describing how burden resistors are fitted to the rear panels of instruments, what industrial temperature sensors and transmitters actually look like, our own specially-designed calibration tables for thermocouples, the use of dp cells, how hydrostatic pressure measurements are converted to level measurements using pressure sensors and how manifolds are used to zero dp cells used in flow metering:
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Colour handouts are issued to candidates when necessary - for example when looking at the complex colour-coding systems used for thermocouple cables and connectors:
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The course involves connecting various devices into current loops so that candidates learn about how current loops work and how devices are connected into them. They also calibrate these devices using a range of professional industrial Time Electronics current calibrators, used throughout the instrumentation engineering world.
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We also connect up a range of industry-standard Beka loop indicators, looking at the various configuration options and adjusting them so that they indicate the required PV at the zero and span settings.
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Candidates on the instrumentation course then learn about the various devices used in industrial temperature measurement systems - we concentrate on thermocouples and Pt100s and their associated cabling, connectors and transmitter heads. Candidates connect up various sensors, looking at the signals that they produce and build current loops around the relevant transmitters.
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The circuits built by candidates are then calibrated using industrial temperature calibration units. Candidates learn about issues like cold junction compensation and three/four wire measurements.
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Candidates then learn about pressure measurement: the various units used to quantify pressure and how industrial pressure measurement devices should be calibrated, using industrial pressure sources.
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For further practice at using the pressure sources, candidates on the instrumentation course then connect and calibrate a range of industrial pressure switches.
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Industrial pressure transmitters are then connected on to current loops and calibrated using the pressure sources.
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Candidates then learn about level measurement systems and the various methods by which industrial measurements are made are analysed; we look at hydrostatic, load cell and bubbler systems. Ultrasonic measurement systems are quite common and are therefore the main focus of the instrumentation course.
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Candidates are then introduced to the more modern field-programmed 'smart' devices, which provide for remote calibration. Candidates connect, configure and calibrate a smart device using hand-held programming units, allowing them to experience how modern instrumentation is calibrated.
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Many instrumentation systems control processes using valves and we therefore look at the various types of control valves, I to P converters and valve positioners commonly used and how these would be connected and calibrated.
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Weighing machines are commonly used in industrial instrumentation systems to quantify the contents of a container and we therefore look in detail at the range of 4-wire and 6-wire load cells in common use and examples of the transmitter electronics typically connected to them.
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Various other measurements (turbidity, density, conductivity and pH) are used in some industries, and we therefore look at each of these, giving candidates the opportunity to concentrate on them if they are relevant to their workplace. A stock of calibration and buffer fluids are used to create a range of readings for each measurement.
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The instrumentation course requires a clean air supply and in order to simplify the logistics of the training course we use our own (silent) compressor. All the tools needed by the candidates to make the electrical and pneumatic connections to the devices involved in the practical exercises are provided by us.
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