Setpoints/setpoint limits tutorial

“Hello, I am Michael Whiteside, an application engineer here at Alicat Scientific. In this video, I am going to show you how to give setpoints to your Alicat device, as well as establish some setpoint limits. Now let’s get started.

In order to give a setpoint to the device, we must first check the setpoint source. We do this by hitting menu (bottom right button), control (top left button), advanced control (bottom middle button), and set point source at the top left here. Now we see we have serial and front panel as well as analog. The serial and front panel is used to give setpoints over serial or just using the front display, whereas analog is used to give setpoints in analog control systems. Since we are just using the front display here, we will select serial and front panel (bottom right button for ‘set’).

Go back to the main menu and we see the setpoint button in the top right. We will hit that, and we can give any setpoint within the 0-50 SLPM range. Say we would like to do 5 SLPM, we scroll up (top three buttons for ‘up’, ‘down’, and ‘select digit’) and hit set (bottom right button). Now we see that the setpoint is set for 5 SLPM.

If we would like to establish some setpoint limits within this range, we will go to menu (bottom right button), control (top left button), advanced control (bottom middle button), control options (bottom middle button), and setpoint limits at the bottom (bottom middle button).

Now what these limits do is it tells the device not to accept the setpoint if the setpoint is out of the range of these limits. Say the minimum we would like to set to 2 SLPM (top three buttons for ‘up’, ‘down’, and ‘select digit’ and bottom right button for ‘set’). The maximum we will set to say 30 (top three buttons for ‘up’, ‘down’, and ‘select digit’ and bottom right button for ‘set’).

Now if a setpoint is given to the device that is outside of this range, the device will not accept the setpoint and come back with an error. Say we would like to send it 1 SLPM (top right button for setpoint) which was clearly outside of the range. The device will tell us that the setpoint is out of range.

In order to remove these limits, we will go to menu (bottom right button), control (top left button), advanced control (bottom middle button), control options (bottom middle button), setpoint limits (bottom middle button), and we can just simply click remove limits (top middle button). Now the device has the 0-50 SLPM range again.

That is how to properly send a setpoint, as well as establish setpoint limits on your Alicat device.”