PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE
Savings from speed The savings can add up fast. Consider a cigarette plant. For one customer, machines
with improved sensors and controllers cost $175,000, Mor- gan said. The customer bought 50 machines and payback time was measured in months. “The advanced machines made the process go that
much faster,” he said. Improved sensors and controllers can help companies
monitor remote assets—assets that in the past might get checked only once a year, said Kyle Horsman, product spe- cialist in Turck Inc.’s sensors division. “We sell a linear device in the oil and gas market
that goes on a machine that pumps crude oil out of the ground,” he said. “The sensor tracks to make sure the pump is running its full stroke of 20' (6.1 m). The information
sensors and controllers, it’s greatly improved the chance of catching something. With continuous feedback, it’s live data. The biggest thing is: somebody gets notified. They or we can take care of it immediately. That can correlate to thousands of dollars to the customer.” Sensors and control systems now provide valuable
information on how to optimize production. A food and beverage company might discover that instead of a long cleaning cycle once a day, running shorter cleaning cycles every five hours helps the system run more smoothly, Horsman said.
In some cases, smarter machines can compensate for
problems. “If a bearing starts to wear out, the drive automati- cally compensates,” he said. Even if the machine doesn’t compensate, it sends data about its performance to people who can quickly adjust, repair or shut down the machine. These improvements make it much easier to
customize production. “One of the trends in manufacturing is a
broader variety of different packaging types and customized products,” Hirschinger said. “One of the key things to support that trend is more flexible machines. “Manufacturers want short runs of different
Turck’s Q-track family of sensors, seen in yellow at the top of this press, takes measurements of the press cylinder to ensure optimal movement and operation. The sensors rely on resistance inductive capacitance technology to process and communicate position.
is blasted from the control system over a satellite. If it gets below a certain stroke or is running at full stroke but tak- ing twice as long, the company can send a technician out. When you’re talking about volume being pumped out, it can make a big difference.” The well might be drying up; the cavity might be crum- bling; or something else might be wrong, Horsman said. “Previously, they may check on these things only once
a year,” he said. “With the old legacy systems, there was nothing there giving them any type of feedback. By putting
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configurations of products. In the past, you’d have to make a lot of manual conversions, mechanical changes and manual reconfigura- tions to reconfigure the machine for a new product. In some cases, it could take half a day,” he added. “Today’s machines are easily reconfigured to run different products. The machine automatically runs that new product without having to do any manual or mechani- cal changeout. The machine is automatically and quickly reconfigured based on the infor- mation downloaded.” Consider a plant that makes diapers. In the past, it might take hours to recon-
figure the machine to switch to a smaller size, a different brand or different thickness, he said. “On the same machine, you might produce a batch of generic diapers and a batch of Huggies. Some of the diaper lines have up to 200 different attributes of motion control. It could take a half hour per drive to reconfigure the machines. Now, machines are easily reconfigured to run different products. You just put in the new recipe. The machine automatically runs that new product without hav- ing to do any manual or mechanical changeout.”
March 2017
Photo courtesy Turck
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