Usually, when you price up permanent online condition monitoring solutions the price is usually in the thousands of pounds, putting it out of reach of many businesses, Fletcher Moorland have developed a solution not in the thousands of pounds but in the hundreds!
The image above shows the equipment we are using in our next installation. We are installing this equipment on three motors at a local quarry. Firstly the sensors will be mounted on the three motors along with the local tower lights which will alert the operators if the vibration or temperature goes above a pre-programmed level. Not only does this system alert the operators in the vicinity (for this application this was a requirement for our customer), in-built wireless transmitters also communicate with a central control panel, this can be up to 1Km away from the sensors. For this application, the control panel will be installed in the control room at the quarry.
Programmed on the display for this application will be the overall condition of the three units, as below. If all’s ok then the control panel will display a healthy sign for each asset.
Should the vibration or temperature go above a pre-programmed level, the control panel will alert the control room operator to a problem. The operator can then interrogate the issue by choosing the asset showing a fault, then seeing exactly what is in an alarm status. The measurement in alarm will be highlighted in red.
For this application the control panel logs all the measurements so data can be trended, once a problem is encountered the customer will phone our reliability team who will come to site to do a more in-depth investigation as to the cause of the alarms. A plan can then be put in place to either continue to monitor the asset or plan in a removal. All this helps to remove downtime from unexpected failure.
We have developed this system to be expandable and up to 50 motors can be monitored by a single HMI system. It can be expanded further to message or email a site contact or engineer when an alarm is triggered.
One of the benefits of this system is that the sensors are wireless and battery powered, no fixed wiring needs to be installed from the sensors to the central control unit. this allows us to reduce the costs considerably compared to fixed wired systems.
Online monitoring systems are superior to monthly measure and trend approaches, the system is always on rather than a twenty-second or so measurement once a month. Having a system constantly measuring the health of your equipment will highlight any problems sooner and prevent costly downtime.
If you wish to know more or see a demonstration of this exciting new system please call us on 01782 411021 or email me matt@fletchermoorland.co.uk.