The Johannesburg branch held its Technology Evening on 8 June, where Gary Friend, chairman of the Foundation Fieldbus Southern African Marketing Committee (FFSAMC), presented an overview of Foundation fieldbus and the efforts of the FFSAMC to ensure that there is proper training available so that users and potential users gain maximum benefit from this technology.
Johan Grobler (l) with Bjorn Matthews of the University of Pretoria, recipient of the Schneider Electric/SAIMC award for his thesis on robots and artificial intelligence
Foundation fieldbus has been around for many years, but has not had much publicity in South Africa until recently. Part of the problem is lack of knowledge about the advantages that the technology can offer.
It is an all-digital, serial, two-way communications system that serves as the
base-level network in a plant or factory automation environment. Based on an open architecture developed and administered by the Fieldbus Foundation, it is targeted for applications using basic and advanced regulatory control and for much of the discrete control associated with those functions, mostly in the process industry.
Foundation fieldbus was originally intended as a replacement for the 4-20 mA standard and today it coexists alongside other technologies such as Modbus, Profibus, and industrial Ethernet. Today it enjoys a growing installed base in many heavy process applications such as refining, petrochemicals, power generation, food, beverage, pharmaceuticals and nuclear applications.
MESA Africa Summit has been expanded and rebranded SAIMC Supplier Advisory Council
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We are writing to share some exciting developments regarding the evolution of the MESA Africa Summit, which has been a cornerstone event in industrial automation and manufacturing excellence.
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SAIMC makes it possible for you to claim CPD points for attending courses and technical meetings, or completing an online quiz on a SA Instrumentation & Control magazine.
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A couple of sessions at various dealers, a wrong delivery, a failed holiday plan, a two-week unplanned vacation and 32 kg of steel on the back seat awaited us as we left South Africa on a dream holiday. But let me start at the beginning.
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At the most recent SAIMC Secunda technical evening, Jenine Jansen van Vuuren, sales account manager from Comtest Technologies, gave a presentation on the calibration of process instruments.
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The Durban branch of the SAIMC held its October technology meeting, not on the first Wednesday of the month as usual, but on the second Wednesday to accommodate the very interesting presenter, Nico Erasmus from Abacus Automation.
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The October Technology Evening was hosted by Pepperl+Fuchs. Patience Moila, the enterprise mobility expert for sub-Saharan Africa, presented on ‘Lone Worker Protection for the Mobile worker 4.0’.
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Grey imports are a problem worldwide, not least in the automation industry in South Africa. The Supplier Advisory Council (SAC) operates under the umbrella of SAIMC, and is tackling this problem head-on.
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SAIMC makes it possible for you to claim CPD points for attending courses and technical meetings, or completing an online quiz on a SA Instrumentation & Control magazine.
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People depend on accurate information and their own reasoning and belief systems to draw conclusions or make decisions. However, when they are inundated with fake news, the reliability of the information they receive is compromised.
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