Controlling hydraulic motion with precision involves understanding the fundamental difference between servo motors and hydraulic actuators. Electric motors generally respond linearly to control inputs ...

After 33 years with Monsanto and Solutia, I can’t help thinking like a user. Even as a contractor, the user view pervades my motivations and goals. I would make a lousy sales and marketing person.

Self-regulating systems with feedback loops, i.e., the routing back of the output of a system to its input, have existed since antiquity and have since become an integral part of modern technology.

The tuning of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control loops was an important change at HollyFrontier’s Navajo Refinery in Artesia, N.M. Its hands-on, “mandraulic” culture was no longer cutting ...

(Editor's additional note: if you are not familiar with the principles and analysis of PID control: you should be; It is the most important, studied, understandable, and applied closed-loop control ...