Flexible process control for injection molding machines using Java technology

Java is an ideal programming language for development of industrial control systems because of its object-oriented, distributed, and architecture independent features. Traditional control systems for industrial applications are designed according to related task functions in their specific environment. Development and maintenance of control systems always suffer from lacking of reusability and portability of code. In this paper, a Java-based control system, which incorporates the Java technology and an embedded real-time operating system, is developed for an injection-molding machine. Hence, different PC-based controllers can fully work with the same software code of the control law. Hardware-independent process control for industrial automation therefore becomes possible using the Java technology.