PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE
Machines more friendly today Although today’s machines are increasingly smart, they
often no longer require an expert to set up and monitor. Consider a robot with three joints, which are actually
three servomotors. “One master controller knows the position of each ser-
vomotor,” Morgan said. “Ten to fifteen years ago, there was a requirement for a specialist on your team that could deal with that. Now, you don’t have to be a specialist. Some- one with general knowledge could program it and make it work. You don’t have to be a PhD anymore. They’ve made it a lot easier for the end user of the product.” Installing, configuring and tuning machines also is easier. “In the past, these products were difficult to configure,
commission and deploy,” Hirschinger said. “In many cases, when you employ a servo on a machine, the servo has to be tuned and optimized for the mechanics the machine is running on. That used to be analog, then digital. You needed an expert to set those up. More recently, advances in servo and servo loops technology allows these drives to self-tune. These drives can recognize the mechanical configuration and measure data that is coming out of the machine. “We can automatically tune the drive based on the mechanics it’s connected to. Today you can take a servo-
motor with a well-designed mechanical machine and easily integrate it. You don’t have to enter catalog numbers and fine-tune it. It tunes itself. It allows you to commission a machine much faster.” The available data also helps as manufacturers transi-
tion from selling only products to selling products-as- services. Both the system manufacturer and end user can receive data critical to monitor and rate machine effective- ness. Case in point: “I scheduled this machine to run six hours: did it run six hours and did it meet quality stan- dards?” Weihl said. The company 1200 miles away that made the machine also might get a notification when something goes wrong, Morgan said. At one company using machine-monitoring sensors, a milling machine had high-speed spindles that could be knocked out of service by unexpected vibrations, lack of lubrication to bearings or other catalysts—resulting in the need for a $50,000 repair and a three-day delay as a replacement was ordered, Weihl said. The company was using the data to do an autopsy after a machine failed. Weihl wanted to be proactive. “You’re monitoring the spindle to do a post-mortem,” he said. “I wanted to use it as a preventive tool. I wanted
Opto 22 uses its own motion control prod- ucts in its factory in Southern California. Opto 22 motion control systems are used for automated test stations and for two different automated parts carou- sels in the company’s factory. As orders are received at the fac- tory, the parts carou- sel operator is able to automatically call up the parts required to build a bill of materials to fulfill the order. The systems have been up- graded over the years and today are com- prised of a combination of Opto 22’s guaran- teed I/O and motion control products.
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March 2017
Photo courtesy Opto 22
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