You can be doing MORE with Your Sensors!

Recently Hank Hogan published an article in Control Design titled “Sensor, Diagnose Thyself.”  (To be honest, I really wanted to steal his title for my blog entry.)   I think Hank did a great job dissecting the key benefits of smart sensors and the amazing things you can do with them.  Utilizing the technology IO-Link (that we have discussed in many past Blog Entries), sensors can communicate more with the controller and provide more data than ever before.

Some of the key points that I really thought are useful to maintenance and engineers at end-user facilities or machine builders:

• Being able to detect and notify about pending failures; for example a photoeye’s lens is dirty and needs to be cleaned.
• A failed sensor needs to be swapped out quickly; IO-Link allows for the smart sensors settings to be cloned and the swap to be executed super fast.
• Configure a sensor before installation; program with your laptop: sample rate, response time, measurement settings, on/off switch points, anything!
• One platform can be used for many sensor types;  this gives familiarity to a single interface while using multiple sensor types and technologies.
• In the future sensors in a wireless cloud would self-heal;  this is an amazing concept and if we can figure out the price for radios and batteries to make it cost-effective, I think this could be a game changer someday.

But all that being said, it really comes down to the total cost of ownership doing it the standard sensor way versus the smart sensor way.  I think you will pay more upfront in capital but down the line there will be less cost in maintenance and downtime.

I have a great line of IO-Link products and smart sensor devices, please check them out!

What’s an Artificial Lift?

Artificial Lift

An artificial lift is a device used in the oil and gas industry when there is insufficient pressure necessary to lift fluids from a oils well to the surface in already-drilled wells or in new wells, to increase the flow rate above what would flow out naturally.  You can see what an artificial lift looks like in the picture to the right.

Hydraulic cylinders are used in the valve systems of artificial lift systems to move fluids in and out of the process. An explosion-proof transducer is the perfect choice for mounting inside the cylinders for valve control, as it is a Class 1, Division 1 Certified unit that can be used in these potentially explosive environments (pictured at bottom).

 Artificial Lifts are replacing on shore “Horse Head” pumps (a.k.a. nodding donkey, thirsty bird, pump jack or grasshopper pump), and is the overhead drive for a reciprocating piston pump that is used to move liquid out of a well if there is not enough pressure to move it out naturally to the surface.  Approximately 5 to 40 liters of liquid is moved with each stroke of the horse head pump (different sized pumps will move different volumes of fluid).

 

For more information on explosion-proof transducers, click here.

 

Balluff TA12 Explosion-Proof Transducer

”Well Jack Me Up!” – Error Proofing a Car Jack Kit

Picture this scenario.   You, your spouse, or one of your kids happens to be riding one night in the middle of nowhere when a tire blows on the car.  First, we can only hope that your loved one remembered the lesson they received on how to change a flat tire in a pinch (if we gave it to them in the first place), because on this particular night, there’s no cell coverage where they’re at, AAA isn’t going to get to them very quickly, there isn’t a can of Flat Fix in the trunk, and there isn’t much traffic on the road they’re traveling on for a good Samaritan to likely show up any time soon (the scenario is extreme, but not impossible).  The jack kit sitting under the spare tire is going to seem pretty doggoned important, don’t you think? 

We take a lot for granted these days and for those of us who have been involved in the world of factory automation for many years, getting to work with customers to help solve Error-Proofing challenges on the plant floor is like one big “Class Trip” every single day!   It’s kind of like providing our customers with “toys for adults”.  And it’s a real hoot.  We get to see how stuff is made, get the opportunity to help manufacturers build better products through our Error-Proofing sensing technologies and learn over time which end products to buy and which ones to shy away from!  We also quickly realize the extreme importance of the DETAIL!  Like the components in the emergency jack kit!  What if the main handle was missing when you or your relative went to jack up the car?  What if there wasn’t any grease on the main lift shaft threads and the car couldn’t be raised?  What if other parts were missing from the kit? Not a good scenario.

The Best Way to Communicate with Smart Sensors

When I am discussing with customers the use of smart sensors and smart devices in industrial automation, I always get posed with these questions:

• How do the smart sensors interface with the controller?
• How do you configure the device?
• How do you get diagnostics out of it?
• What other information can it provide?

This is sort of solved in a muddled world of proprietary communications or expensive network enabled sensors.  But John and I have been talking for a long time about IO-Link, which can easily and cost effectively answer all these questions!

The Intern Perspective – My First Tradeshow

Last week I took part in my first business trip and trade show event: FabTech in Chicago. I am still very much in the processing phase of this event but I know it has had a large influence on my life.

On Sunday, Paulina (a Balluff colleague) and I left the Cincinnati area around 9:00 AM. We arrived around 1:30 or 2:00 and checked into the Hyatt. We then went over to the McCormick building to finish setting up the Balluff booth. The vastness of the building itself was inspiring. Carpets were rolled up, displays were being manipulated in several booths, and I was experiencing slight sensory overload.

After a few hours running around, cleaning, wiring, and finishing up all the final touches, the power was cut and we called it a day. The evening brought some slight exposure toChicago.

I’ve got the Feeder Bowl Blues (not to be confused with “Feed Bag Blues”)

Honestly, every day we run into one of the most commonly seen and vital categories of automation equipment imaginable on the factory floor – the good old automation stalwart servant, the feeder bowl.

These devices are imperative to successful automated assembly processes and are used in hundreds of applications in factory automation.   But the successful and timely, synchronous delivery and individual of components provided by the feeder bowl from the bowl itself through the feed track system, is dependent on reliable sensing.  If “clogs” or traffic jams occur anywhere in the pathway, it interferes with the overall timely assembly of goods, regardless of the industrial discipline.  We see a wide array of sensing technologies from manufacturer to manufacturer, regardless of the country of origin, regarding sensing in these machines.

Inductive proximity sensors, ultrasonic sensors, photoelectric types are all integrated into the tracking of screws, nuts, washers, and a wide array of other metallic and non-metallic sub components fed into the manufacturing stream. One of the most common products used in sensing components being supplied through feeder bowl tracks even today, is the separate amplifier and armor jacketed pair of fiber optic emitters/receivers.  Do they work? Absolutely.  Do they fail?  Absolutely.

Faster Than Light Particles? Slow Down a Minute…

I have been fascinated by all the media hoopla following the stunning announcement last month by scientists working at the OPERA project in Italy. Scientists there think that they may have discovered particles called neutrinos traveling at speeds faster than light.  That is, the particles arrived at the detector earlier than light would have arrived when traveling in a vacuum.

Needless to say, if true that would appear to stand modern physics and the universe as we understand it upside down!  So much of modern physics is based upon Einstein’s theory of relativity, which holds that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light.

There was an immediate spate of reporting and opinion declaring that “Everything we know about the universe is wrong”.

I thought to myself, “Really?”

Ever since the media hyping of “cold fusion” back in the 1980s, I have learned to be cautious when hearing reports of stunning new scientific discoveries.  We all want to believe in amazing new revelations and the happy fact is that credible reports of fantastic advances in science and technology arrive on an almost daily basis.  But when something is reported that seems “too good to be true”, or that doesn’t at all fit into our current understanding of the world…open-minded but healthy skepticism is warranted.

Heading to Fabtech? Read this first.

Balluff has the opportunity to share some of the company’s proven Error-Proofing Techniques in a Seminar at Fabtech on November 14, 2011 in McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.  The session is segmented into two areas:

1.   Automated/Robotic Weld Cell Process Improvement. We continue to see a great deal of need in this arena.  When the economy tanked in 2007/2008, many companies inside and outside of the Automotive Industry were on the edge and many good, talented people were let go.  In some cases, the people whose jobs were eliminated had many years of experience in maintenance and in manufacturing engineering.  When volumes of work came back, so did the problems associated with weld cell nesting, Poka-Yoke, clamp sensing because of loading impact, weld debris hostility and other issues related to peripheral sensing devices in weld cells; in many cases, without the experienced personnel to reduce time in consumption used to address a wide range of problems.  In this session, we will discuss and provide examples of proven techniques aimed squarely at these productivity and time-wasting problems that will return significant ROI for many customers. 

The True Cost of Low-Cost

As previously discussed, the world of linear position sensors is pretty diverse. There are many types of linear sensors available in many different form factors, employing many different technologies, and coming in at many different price points.  For the sake of discussion, let’s imagine you’re shopping for a linear position sensor, and you’ve decidedon a form factor.  You’ve settled on a position sensor that will be externally mounted on your machine.  And you don’t really care much about the “under the hood” technology; you just care that the sensor does what it’s supposed to do when it’s installed.  Now, let’s further assume that you find a couple of different sensors that you think will do the job, and the only difference is the cost.  It makes sense to choose the lowest cost option, right?  Well, maybe not.

The Intern Perspective

I went walking into a job fair, hosted by my university, expecting only to gather information about companies and their expectations of employment. This mere investigation of the credibility of my competencies led me to meeting Tom and Jenny.  Their enthusiasm for Balluff was infiltrating my front of being a cool, calm, collected young adult ready to take on responsibilities within the world of engineering.  The conversation came to close but I was so enthused by my new acquaintances that I couldn’t stop smiling the remainder of the day.

It wasn’t long until I got a phone call, an interview, and a job as a marketing intern. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s my first ‘big girl’ job or otherwise, but it was semi-difficult keeping my “cool” when I saw my name on a cubicle and business cards. I still tend to get giddy over it all.