Red Lion Controls, the global experts in communication, monitoring and control for industrial automation and networking, today announced that its rugged Graphite Human Machine Interface (HMI) operator panels have been certified to operate in global ATEX zone 2/22 and IECEx zone 2 environments. Following Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Class I, Division 2 Listed status received last year, these approvals certify that Graphite HMIs are safe for use with industrial control equipment in potentially explosive, hazardous locations around the world.
Red Lion's touchscreen Graphite HMIs are now able to provide organizations with powerful monitoring and control capabilities regardless of operating environment, even locations subject to potentially explosive atmospheres that may result from gas, vapor, mist and/or dust. This enables industrial customers in markets such as oil and gas, flour and grain, mining, chemical, painting and metal processing to benefit from rugged aluminum construction, wider operating temperatures and high shock/vibration tolerances.
"The addition of ATEX and IECEx certifications to Red Lion's Graphite HMIs enable us to better serve additional markets that require rugged, sunlight-visible operator panels for use in hazardous locations," said Jeff Thornton, director of product management at Red Lion Controls. "Plug-and-play expandability via modular PID control, I/O and communications modules combined with Crimson software eases configuration to simplify integration regardless of environment."
From factories to extreme locations, Graphite HMIs enable customers to connect, monitor and control processes across a broad range of industries to meet varying industrial automation requirements. Since its launch in July of 2013, Red Lion's Graphite platform has received numerous global accolades, including Automation World's "First Team Supplier, HMI Hardware" award, the "Industrial Control Award" from Plant Engineering China and "Best Product of the Year" from Control Engineering China.