When ball bearings become intelligent
Foreign bodies in ball bearings allow the material to chip off permanently. In certain environments, the ball bearings oxidize easily and corrosion follows. In the future, companies will integrate intelligent ball bearings into industrial plants, which automatically notice when they wear out. We at orbit Sensorfusion deal with Technologies that enable predictive maintenance.
Predictive maintenance
You may want to monitor how much and in what way your bearing is vibrating. Based on the vibration pattern or by frequency analysis, a state can be defined as "normal". If the normal vibration pattern disappears or new frequencies occur, this can be an indication of maintenance needs. External influencing parameters from the process environment also help you as a customer to get a more accurate overall picture of your process.
What must we pay attention to?
Anyone who operates an industrial plant is welcome to overlook the additional sensors. This applies to the ongoing machine operation itself, but also to the processes that are carried out by employees. In some production fields, it may be necessary to protect the sensors by filter membranes in the ventilation slots. If the environment is very dirty, for example.
If no WLAN is available, data is transmitted by radio to the cloud. You can then view the data in the visualization app from anywhere.
What do we have to do to make it work?
We achieve good results through small and wireless Sensor nodes. These are mounted at the location of the event, such as on the transport container or directly on the treadmill. The sensor nodes are first adapted by orbit Sensorfusion to the prevailing environmental aspects in production. Now the data collection can go off without a second!
The normal process is taught with machine learning after the sensors have collected enough information. Damaged bearings are marked in the data and the statistical model is tested and optimized. The sensor system remains installed after completion. It continuously detects how the ball bearings vibrate in the transport process so that predictive maintenance is successful.
