Didactic bench uses the technology of Nexto Xpress PLC

Here, at Altus, we believe in education as an element of developing. Therefore, we get involved in several initiatives to motivate the technical capacitation of students and young professionals, a real life changer path to them. One of the educational institutions with which we have a long and important relationship is SENAI - National Service for Industrial Learning. Many of the group`s schools and colleges have technical laboratories equipped with PLCs, HMIs and other high-tech equipment supplied by Altus.

Nexto Xpress PLC on didactic panels and benches

Among our latest projects involving this matter are the supply of products for the manufacture of didactic benches and panels produced by by a company specialized in developing solutions for technical training and capacitation located in the Brazilian South East territory.  The pneumatic benches developed for the automation and mechatronics courses were designed having as main parts the XP325 controller, one of the most advanced models of the Nexto Xpress IoT ready PLC family, and the X2-BASE-7 HMI.

Another project where the PLC XP325 was also used as a centerpiece was the assembly of 23 teaching benches developed for SENAI-RS and installed in technical laboratories of 17 schools in different cities in the country’s Southern territory. With a wide variety of communication interfaces and support for the most used protocols in the market, Nexto Xpress controllers have a high level of connectivity, which allows them to fully interact with the simulation software used on the benches. This feature was essential for the project`s success, since the equipment has been used for online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The compact PLCs from Altus` most advanced series of products were also applied in another solution developed to SENAI-SP, this time in didactical industrial panels. For this project, the controller chosen was the XP340, model of the Nexto Xpress family with a high density of I/O points and support for web page development. The whole project demanded 13 sets of PLCs and X2-BASE-7 HMI. The panels were installed in two SENAI schools, one in a countryside city and the other at the Volkswagen training center, located inside a Volkswagen plant.

The technological alignment of Altus` products with the demands of the market was decisive to chose Nexto Xpress PLCs as the mains solution to this projects. Features such as the availability of embedded analog and digital I/Os, the wide variety of communication protocols, the webserver support (availably in the XP340 model) and the free CODESYS programming platform lays the controller as one of the most flexibles and versatile in his category.

In addition to the aforementioned projects with schools, Altus and its partner are already working on optimizing the technical laboratories of other educational institutions in the Southeast and Northeast of Brazil. Soon, on school in the interior of the state of São Paulo will receive new hydraulic benches with the CLP XP325 for proportional control and monitoring. The SENAI-PE, on the other hand, ordered the production of 10 new double benches equipped with 10 XP340 PLCs, five for the development of projects in pneumatic automation and five for the hydraulic laboratory, both in a WEB environment allowing access to the experiments digitally, as well as the monitoring of digital and analog variables through mobile devices.