At any time of year, it’s vital to keep equipment running to ensure that critical business can continue. However, getting personnel on-site to monitor and maintain assets is not easy, especially during the current challenges facing industry.
Smart sensors have been around for some years, but now they have the potential to orchestrate remote condition monitoring of various assets within powertrain such as motors, mechanical transmission components such as mounted bearings, and the driven load such as pumps.
The smart sensor is attached to motors, mounted bearings and pumps, and monitors parameters such as temperature, vibration, noise and energy consumption. The data is harvested via Bluetooth before being transmitted to the cloud. The data is analysed and displayed via a single monitoring portal to control the health and performance of the powertrain’s individual assets, as one unified system and to act before problems occur. The performance data collected enables the user to see changes in temperature or vibration within the pump or mounted bearing. It enables energy use and power output of motors to be tracked.
This opens vast new possibilities for remote monitoring and predictive maintenance. The ability to track the status and condition of the entire installed base of drives, motors, bearings and pumps in one place has many benefits including less downtime, extended equipment lifetime, improved performance, safer operations, lower costs and higher profitability. This ultimately means that engineers no longer have to physically access the equipment in order to assess its condition, reducing risk and keeping personnel out of harm’s way. It also means that maintenance issues can be flagged up before they turn into failures, preventing downtime while ensuring that maintenance is carried out when and where it is needed. This results in maintenance spend being optimized based on individual equipment needs so that spares and labour are only used when necessary, i.e. sooner on hardworking assets and later on assets that have an easier life.
ABB’s cross-industry experience is literally coded into its condition monitoring service, thereby giving customers proprietary insights into powertrain performance.
Customers can receive a thorough report on equipment status and further maintenance recommendations.
ABB has launched a website containing videos, leaflets and other resources explaining the uses and benefits of condition monitoring for powertrains. Visit http://bit.ly/2vxHlkO to find out more.
