Abstract: At present, some high-performance NdFeB magnetic material needs to be stored in a glove box filled with inert gas before sintering. However, in terms of operation mode, each furnace still works independently, and there is no information exchange between furnaces. The charging mode is that the on-site operator manually moves the glove box to connect with the furnace to complete the feeding and discharging of the furnace, and then according to the furnace production process, the operator performs the vacuuming, heating and cooling manually. With the intelligent transformation of production equipment, reliability, economy and practicability have always been the goals of the production workshop. Therefore, this paper proposes an application scheme of small PLC network based on Siemens S7 communication in cluster control system for glove box-sintering furnace, which can realize stable and reliable unmanned control and management.

Key words: S7 communication, PLC network, glove box protection loading, sintering furnace, cluster control system