Enhancing Food Safety in Commercial Kitchens with Watlow PID Controllers

To protect public health and safety, Australia and New Zealand have a joint agreement designed to implement and enforce mandatory food standards through the Food Regulation system.  

Safeguarding food safety begins from food production. In commercial kitchens, for instance, large ovens, food dehydrators, and drying ovens yield a substantial amount of food products daily. Keeping these equipment in tip-top condition is of paramount importance, not only in ensuring that food produced is safe, but also of superior quality.  

Manually checking temperatures from multiple equipment is unproductive and prone to errors. This is where the Watlow PM Legacy PID temperature controller can help you. The PM Legacy monitors your kitchen equipment’s desired temperature settings and maintains them throughout the food production process, which results in quality finished products, and optimised energy use.  

The Watlow PM Legacy range has a simple user interface, and menu functionality without complex elements. They come in 1/16 and 1/32 DIN mount panels and can easily integrate with your existing setup.  

What is a PID Temperature Controller?  

A PID temperature controller is a device that helps keep a certain temperature through three control measures: proportional, integral, and derivative, hence the term PID.  

Proportional: reacts to the current error. This checks the difference between desired and actual temperatures, and applies an output based on the extent of difference, e.g., big discrepancy equals big output.  

Integral: reacts to the accumulation of past errors. This function adds up the differences between the desired and actual measurements over time, and helps remove the ongoing errors by adjusting the output accordingly.  

Derivative: reacts to the rate of change of the error. This feature predicts how the temperature will change based on how fast the error is happening. If the error is changing quickly, it applies a correction to slow down the change to prevent overshooting.  

Features and Benefits of The Watlow PM Legacy Range 

• Simplified menu with streamlined list of parameters, which reduces user training costs and user programming errors caused by unnecessary features 

• PID auto-tune for fast equipment setup  

• Standard bus communications for easy configuration via PC communications protocol and free software 

• Touch-safe package for installer and operator safety 

• Smooth touch keypad to make cleaning easier and efficient  

Watlow PM Legacy can be customised for your application. If you require additional information, call our team of experts at ADM to provide you with technical advice, and assistance with your setup. You can find our contact details here.