Alex1000 (Customer) asked a question.
I am trying to replace a more expensive controller with SOLO controller. When running RAMP/SOAK temperature profile on SOLO 9696 VVE I find that controller does slow down before reaching the setpoint and this results in lesser time at required temperature. For example I need 1 hour @ 150°C, but with SOLO I only get 40 minutes, because the other 20 minutes controller was still trying to get there in temperature.
With other more expensive controller I don't have this - see attached examples for expensive controller and SOLO, where you can see that SOLO profile is more "curvy" and "relaxed" so to speak, PID tries to guess the time needed to reach temperature and it slows down the speed, as a result I'm late getting there. Is there any way to speed this controller up? I need it to RAMP more aggressively, similar to expensive controller.
Thanks for the information.
The trick was to Auto-Tune the controller. To do this set it to Heating Loop with PID Control (12-2 in Quick Start Guide), then in this mode perform Auto-Tune process for each PID profile PID0 to PID3 with different setpoints that are specific to your process (refer to Manual how to do Auto-Tune). And then once Auto-Tune process is done for each PID profile, revert back to Ramp/Soak Control and the controller should behave as it should.
PID settings that Auto-tune created are VERY different from what I was trying to enter manually. Basically without doing Auto-Tune it will be very hard to figure out the PID settings manually that will work with your process. Thanks to Auto-Tune right now the SOLO9696 Controller ramps to temperature very quickly, pretty much the same as other controller.