Glass Company throws out their temperature transmitters and they are still happy with the supplier.
A flat glass company purchased 730 X DAT 2015 temperature transmitters. The DAT2015 units were to be installed whilst the flat glass flotation furnace was on maintenance shutdown. The DAT2015’s were used for their temperature control on the flat glass furnace. 400 K type thermocouple temperature sensors were measuring a range from 0- 2000’F and the remaining 330 were R type thermocouple temperature sensors measuring a range of 0-3000’F.
The approach to the furnace and away from the furnace was measured by K type thermocouples. The R type thermocouples were used to measure the glass environment in the area whilst the glass was actually molten.
The DAT2015 from Datexel is a PC programmable temperature transmitter that can be configured to convert thermocouples (J, K, S, R, B, E, T, and N types), RTD (Pt100, Pt1000, Ni100 and Ni1000), voltage (mV 0-700mV and Voltage 0-10V) potentiometer (200 Ohms, 500Ohms and 50Kohms), resistance (0-300 and 0-2000Ohms) current (-10mA to +24mA) to 4-20mA. The unit is loop powered and is able to drive impedance to 1000 Ohms.
However, when the furnace was commissioned and the temperature went above 2400’F the thermocouples that the glass company purchased failed, the insulation/isolation actually broke down and these thermocouples went to ground.
The customer was in very serious trouble as it meant the whole plant had to be shut down and all the thermocouples had to be replaced.
By chance the problem was reported to a Datexel Engineer. With the experience of this engineer he told the factory manager that we could replace the DAT2015 non isolated temperature transmitters with DAT4035 isolated transmitters and that would solve the problem. Datexel quickly provided 10 DAT 4035 which were isolated temperature transmitters. This solved the problem on the 10 highest temperature points. It was decided to replace all the 330 high temperature transmitters. The new units were all supplied within two weeks and now the plant is running perfectly.
The experience of the Datexel Engineer saved the flat glass company millions of dollars in down time and saved all the thermocouples from having to be replaced.