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Preferred Controls Adds Support For Weatherford To Rod Pump Controller Gateway Product
Preferred Controls has released Weatherford support for their Netconnex product line. The Netconnex is an industrial gateway product that is manufactured by Preferred Controls. Typically mounted inside the Weatherford or Lufkin rod pump controller, the Netconnex is a din rail mounted product that allows Allen Bradley MicroLogix, CompactLogix, and ControlLogix processors to communicate with the rod pump controllers over Ethernet/IP using PCCC messaging. The Netconnex now supports both Lufkin ELAM and Weatherford 8500 protocols. Lufkin and Weatherford rod pumps have a dominate presence on oil production pads and the rod pump controllers provided with these rod pumps provide critical alarming, control, and analysis of the rod pumps efficiency via dynagraph analysis. Traditional oil production pad SCADA systems can only interface with the rod pump controllers over a simple electromechanical interface whereas the rod pump controller provides a single common alarm in the form of a contact closure or the SCADA system provides a contact closure to the rod pump controller to give a permissive signal to run. Without the use of the Netconnex product, the rod pump controller's detailed alarming, parameter adjustment, unit resets, and dynagraph analysis, etc... cannot be integrated into the Allen Bradley based oil production pad SCADA system. Because of this limitation, it is common practice to deploy a secondary SCADA system such as XSPOC by Theta Oil Field Solutions just for the rod pump controllers. The Netconnex allows complete integration of the rod pump controllers into the oil producer's Allen Bradley based SCADA system without the need for a second SCADA system. The Netconnex also supports a unique "dual host" feature that allows two ethernet based hosts to access the pump off controller concurrently.