Forum produced on 20th


August 1990. The graphics system, although


based on DOS and very clunky was very advanced for the day and far better than anything anyone else used. We also used trackerballs which looked rather like a large upside-down mouse and these were previously only used for the military and in air traffic control. The company’s first mobile phone was purchased in 1988 at a


cost of £2,500 (and this was a reduced price because it was an ex- demo model!). In 1989 we won a SMART award (Small firms Merit Award for


Research and Technology) which included a cheque for £37,500, for a project called OBT, Optimised Batch Technology, which was designed to optimise the design of a feed mill. Unfortunately, this proved to be massively complicated and too difficult to complete but did give us lots to learn from. DSL were pioneers in using modems for remote support which


saved us lots of travelling and allowed us to do site modifications from our office in Nottingham and at a much-reduced cost. Those early control systems were very expensive and so in 1994


we designed and built what we called SBC4 – a small PC based control system designed for four scales and using one PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). They say that sex sells and customers wanted SBC4 because of its stunning graphics which were truly world-leading. Initially we wanted true 3-dimensional graphics but that looked very odd and so we settled for a sort of 2½ D graphics which is what everyone uses now. Of course, customers wanted more than four scales and more than one PLC and so it was immediately expanded. In those days, PCs (initially running Windows 3.1 then Windows 95) were notoriously unreliable and so we refused to sell SBC4 to our larger customers. We took SBC4 to a Victam Animal Feed Equipment exhibition in Utrecht in The Netherlands and our tiny stand was always full of people coming to have a look. We designed our first animal mill press controller in 1996 and


called it Press Master NT. It was certainly a leap into the dark as pellet press control seemed a very black art then with only Norvidan doing a good job with their controller. We hired some experts to come and tell us how pellet mills should be controlled and our first installation in Burstwick went much better than expected, significantly increasing throughput. We initially started with the Mitsubishi A series PLC, mainly


because Mitsubishi told us the communications protocol for its RS232 communications (Allen Bradley initially refused to tell us their protocol) and we subsequently moved to the Mitsubishi A1S series and now the Q series. Of course, we can use all types of PLCs now. Because of the unreliability of PCs in the early days, it was accepted practice to perform all the control logic in ladder logic actually in the PLC. However, we realised that this had big disadvantages and so we programmed most of the control actually in the PC (as this was so unusual, we never told customers this fact). In about 2000 we had our only real disaster. It was an industrial


rubber manufacturer called Ondura in Keithley, North Yorkshire. As in all disasters there were lots of reasons for it and we ended up putting


Above: The author on site about 30 years ago! FEED COMPOUNDER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 PAGE 47


their old control system back and returning their money. A sobering lesson!


Customers wanted a lot more specific control and so in 2000 we


abandoned SBC4 and designed Batch Master NT (later re-named AutoPilot4Feed when a company in the USA threatened to take us to court because they already had a control system called BatchMaster). Fortunately, you could now run PCs with a real-time operating system called Windows NT which was much more reliable than Windows 95. The brief was to design a configurable control system with which we could configure a complete animal feed mill in two days! Of course, that was impossible but it did concentrate the programmers’ minds. In 2003 we, like many other companies, eyed up the huge market


in the US and decided to start up a new company DSL Systems Inc. with one US employee. Also, like many other companies, we discovered that it is never that easy. So, eventually we wound it up but not before we were introduced to a company in Canada called Comco. Comco were wanting to expand their electrical company with a control system and we ended up selling many copies of AutoPilot4Feed all over the US and Canada. DSL were always keen on exporting and we have sold AutoPilot4Feed to many countries around the world, the great majority to English speaking countries but a few in Spanish and French. In 2004, DSL Systems won


the Victam innovation award for use of a wireless hand held system which allowed the operator to walk around a mill and control/ monitor items. Of course, this was before Wi-Fi as we know it today was available.


Right: DSL’s Victam award 2004 In 2005 at the age of 51, I


decided to sell the DSL Systems to my ‘four senior managers’ - Nigel Brereton, Colin Davies, Peter Mansfield and Matthew Swallow. As part of the sale agreement, I had to stay on full time for a year. After that I agreed to stay on for a while at 20 hours a week – something I’m still happily doing 14 years on.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68