Industrial Engineer · phase 2 of 16 · noun
Scaling
Conversion between raw I/O counts and engineering units such as pressure, temperature, or speed.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- Scaling is the arithmetic that turns raw counts into engineering units, or engineering units back into counts for an output. It is a line through two points, the counts at the bottom of the range and the counts at the top.
- Example
- A level transmitter spans 0 to 20 feet. Scaling maps 4 mA to 0 feet and 20 mA to 20 feet, so 12 mA reads as 10 feet on the HMI.
- Why it matters
- A wrong span reads plausibly wrong, which is worse than reading garbage. When a tank shows 10 feet and the sight glass shows 8, check the scaling before you check the transmitter.
- Hook
- The card counts, and scaling tells it what it counted.
Word knowledge
How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.
In a sentence
The PLC applies scaling to the 4-20 mA pressure-transmitter signal before comparing the result with the high-pressure trip setpoint.
How it is built
- scale base a graduated system or standard of measurement
- -ing suffix the action or process associated with a verb
Where it came from
- Origin
- English scaling, formed from scale and -ing; scale in this sense traces to Latin scala, meaning ladder or staircase
- Entered the language
- 19th century
- What changed
- The ladder image developed into the idea of ordered steps, then a graduated range, and finally the technical process named by scaling.
How it is spelled
- Pattern
- The final silent e in scale is dropped before the vowel suffix -ing.
Spelled like
- rating
- sizing
- tuning
Broken into chunks
-
scale
- scalable
- rescale
- full-scale
-
-ing
- filtering
- sampling
- tuning
What it sits beside
Same subject
- analog input
- engineering units
- signal conditioning
- calibration
Same shape
- rating
- sizing
- tuning
Analog signal-processing operations
- scaling
- filtering
- linearization
- normalization
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 2: PLC I/O and Field Signals
Where the controller meets the machine: discrete and analog signals, the wiring conventions behind them, and the field devices that send them.
