Good medicine: machine health products

Perhaps thousands of products contribute to or monitor machine health, to help avoid the bitter pill of breakdowns. A few examples follow. For many more companies or to search on related categories for more information, visit www.controleng.com or www.cesuppliersearch.com.

For system integrators with appropriate expertise, go to www.controleng.com/integrators.

Built-in maintenance triggers

ABB’s standard drive for a host of industrial applications, the ACS550 series, features ac built-in maintenance triggers, which makes drive and driven-equipment care easier than before, the company says; the triggers help users schedule maintenance of the drive and its associated equipment in stand-alone applications. The “Maintenance Assistant” feature can prompt users to perform a task within specific monitored intervals by monitoring energy consumption, running hours, or motor revolutions. Users can set limits so the drive annunciates when these limits are reached, flagging when the drive, motor, or driven equipment should receive preventive maintenance, previously handled by separate software or PdM system. It’s easy-to-set-up operator interface can be navigated as simply as a mobile phone. Detachable, multi-lingual alphanumeric control panel features two soft keys, the function of which is shown on the easy-to-read display. Automatic energy optimization software is available via the operator interface.

Controller and tool kit monitor calibration

Berkeley Process Control’s BX controller and Semiconductor Toolkit software provide built-in utilities to recognize component health problems before critical failures occur, while devices are still within the tools. That functionality provides the ability to monitor calibration points, wafer mapping system, and mechanical integrity of a wafer handling system.

Mined information yields predictive analytics

Macsea, a provider of diagnostic and predictive CBM software, offers Predictive Analytics to improve operating efficiencies and reduce manufacturing costs. This data mining predicts future probabilities and trends in Macsea Dexter software to automate the process of monitoring, diagnosing, and predicting machinery health for any equipment. Data management and analysis occur continuously, alerting operators when problems are detected, at that point or predicted in the future, to reduce maintenance costs and breakdowns. The software allows organizations to streamline operations by analyzing in real-time, how a specific piece of equipment is performing and predicting future trends and performance. This gives managers the ability to fine-tune plant operations at every stage. To create an accurate predictive model, Dexter continuously collects data and builds a statistical model. Predictions are made with their related probability of occurrence. To increase precision and validity, the model is constantly revised with additional data. The Macsea site offers a free demo.

Vibration, temperature, speed, motor flux

Emerson Process Management’s CSI 9210 Machinery Health Transmitter can analyze sensor data for vibration, temperature, speed, and motor-flux data to determine machine health. It’s been designed to assess the health of motor-pump machine trains. Data are analyzed inside the device and only results are published to the control system. CSI 9210 uses FOUNDATION fieldbus (FF) communications protocol, making information available to an FFcompliant host system. It produces two main analysis results, machinery health values, and machinery alerts, with an onboard process system that evaluates the data to determine what problems may be developing in the machine train by comparing other process values associated with the pump system, like pressure, temperature, and flow rate.

Transmitter monitors vibration measurements

Wilcoxon Research, a supplier of quality vibration sensors and sensor networks, expanded its 4-20 mA loop-powered vibration transmitters, the Wilcoxon Intelligent Transmitter (iT) Series, to allow customers to select from a full line of features at the time of order, including displacement measurements, and true peak and peak-to-peak detection. Options for the iT Transmitter, signal-conditioning modules that make online vibration monitoring available for less, now include four outputs of RMS, peak, true peak, and true peak-to-peak; measurement of acceleration, velocity or displacement; and a selectable full scale that can be specified in standard or metric units.