This is to document a small control panel we built for a sheet metal fabricating facility, to operate a spray unit for applying oil to sheet metal parts. The machine operator at the customer facility had been applying the oil by hand with a spray bottle. They wised to automate the process, and purchased a lube spray unit with a solenoid valve.
We put together a control panel with a small PLC from Horner, and a proximity sensor to sense when the part was in place to apply the spray. We programmed the PLC with four timers, the first is a timer to wait after the sensor makes contact, the second is overall time for spray, the last two timers to control the on/off cycling of the spray valve.
