Golconda is a Nottingham based company of electrical and mechanical engineers who specialise in state-of-the-art Computer Control Systems to the Process Industry, and who support their main contract work by marketing and designing a varied range of materials handling equipment, process control sensors, and automatic weighing units. It is this degree of engineering involvement within the process industries that has led to the company being used as a marketing base for companies such as Cimbria (Loading bellows and mechanical hardware), APM Solutions (3DLevelScanners), Quadtek (Scanning pyrometers), and Babbitt (RF Level sensors). The core business of Golconda has always been plant control, and the roots of the company can easily be traced back to the early days of 'relay control' using beam balance weighing as the cornerstone of automatic proportioning systems. Nowadays, of course, the company is able to offer a great deal of specialist experience in the field of loadcell based weighing units, which are designed to meet the requirements of the batching type process as typified by the rubber industry and the continuous process of the cement industry. The company has sufficient background in the detail to know that the subject of ‘materials handling’ is to be treated with respect, and therefore a range of standard units have been developed which are adapted to meet customer requirements as the occasion arises. There are no false claims, and where practical, good quality proprietary equipment is always used to make up the total system supply. The standards include belt weighers, feeders (heavy and light-duty), screw-based loss-in-weights, silo/hopper weigh bases, bandscales (for rubber mixer loading), and simple batching hopper weighers of various types. These are the fundamental building blocks of good quality process control, and an understanding of the characteristics of these units is an essential requirement of the top-class control engineer. Software expertise and computer hardware knowledge are sometimes only part of the story and it is true to say that Golconda engineers are not troubled by hardware development problems, since all components are selected from proprietary suppliers’ catalogues. Perhaps the most important of the many considerations that customers are keen to explore is the Golconda strategy of offering hardware and software packages which are fully supportable by major suppliers i.e. a non 'black box' approach, which automatically offers to customers, the security of alternative options after the placement of orders. It is unusual for such relatively small companies to be so involved with major plant total control, but Golconda include major sites with Blue Circle Industries, RHM, Mitsui Babcock, Fluor Daniel, Powergen and Bisto Foods on their customer list. Being an Official 'solutions provider' for the International Allen-Bradley/Rockwell group means that Golconda are able to engineer centralised control systems using PC and PLC technology which is certainly state-of -the-art. An Allen-Bradley/ORSI combination is the one favoured by the Hanson Brick company, for example, for their new manufacturing line at Kings Dyke works. This is a good example of a continuous process, in which all raw materials are introduced into the process over Golconda beltweighers and constant rate belt extraction feeders, and are then automatically blended, extruded, cut and faced to produce the wide variation in brick types and styles which are so familiar. A system of this type has also been selected by Laporte Alphagary, at the Melton Mowbray plant which has been built for the production of specialist plastic compounds, and the processes involved are based upon 'Batch Mixing and manufacturing' type principles. In this case, the control system is built around eight Allen-Bradley SLC-505 controllers and eleven Pentium based 'NT' workstations, collectively running a variety of Rockwell software products, and all linked on a plant wide 'Ethernet' network. The control system is used for all aspects of plant control, from raw material intake and storage, to the finished product. The standard Rockwell Automation package 'RS Batch' is used and configured by Golconda for all 'weighing, blending and extruding' functions, with 'RS Batch' being fitted neatly into the SCADA package of 'RS View'. The operational concept and therefore the RS Batch process software for this plant is all built around the 'S88' batch process standard of ISA, which is becoming increasingly accepted worldwide. In addition to the control system provided by Golconda onto this site, the supply also includes SLC based motor and pneumatic control panels, and new and retro fitted vessel weighing systems. Silo level indication is based on the APM 3D Level Scanner package. Control of extruder motors (which are in general large capacity variable speed DC drives), is achieved using thyristor units via 'Device net'. The Control System which has been used at Tiflex is customised in a way which is typical for the rubber industry, but which has none of the constraints or limitations of the usual 'black box' architecture. The customer required the system to be user expandable and user configurable, as well as providing the security of a dual redundant PC approach. The system uses the standard Allen-Bradley SLC 500 PLC processor, remote linked via Ethernet to Dell Pentium operator workstations which are running the very latest Orsi Cube SCADA package. The materials and formulation database is Microsoft Access, allowing direct integration to the company business package. The precise gravimetric blending requirement is served by standard components from the Golconda ranges of bandscales, weighing, feeding and metering hardware which are available as purpose designed for the requirements of the rubber industry, particularly for the automatic introduction of powders, oils and raw rubber into the mixer. More Control Systems of these types are currently at the design stage at Golconda's Nottingham office for a wide range of process industries, and for a wide range of customers, but which all share the same basic requirements of reliable materials handling, accurate blending, and modern control with that extra element of security that everyone needs to count on, when the production really is at its maximum. The Golconda Directors describe the company as: "Small enough to react, big enough to offer the best, young enough to rush and old enough to optimise."