Optimised energy consumption on machines

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2015-08-17 16:15:57

The Power-OM project from Fagor Automation has centered the diagnose of the machine health in the sensor fusion of internal and external data. The FAGOR CNC is already open for interconnection of different applications from customers but two new features have been developed related with the main important points of the project.

Recorded Data visualization at CNC or Browser

The project relies on a well-defined concept to diagnose a machine tool, the fingerprint, which in this context stands for a specific test that is component oriented and tries to find a relationship between the status of that component and the usage conditions.

FAGOR AOTEK‘s main contribution to that aim is a new application in the CNC that allows the definition of what data to record and what strategy to follow when recording it.
 As the sample time can be configured and the basic (minimum) time is the basic time of the CNC, this same application addresses both needs of the Power-OM project, the fingerprint process for health assessment, and the continuous data recording to find possible fault roots.

Data Logger configuration HMI

While not necessary for Power-OM (because recorded data are meant to be used by TEKNIKER’s application or uploaded to the KASEM platform) FAGOR AOTEK has developed a visualization tool that works in any modern browser and allows easy access to recorded data at machine’s site or remotely by any portable device like a smartphone or tablet.

As the Power-OM name itself suggests, power or energy is one the most important signals to look at for condition based monitoring. For motors controlled by the FAGOR drives the torque and power signals are already available. External sensors are needed for other kinds of motors and for monitoring of the whole machine tool energy, one of these sensors has been connected to the CANOpen bus allowing continuous energy monitoring. The system provides a value for every of the three phases (Power_U, Power_V and Power_W in the first figure) that can be composed in a TotalPower value as in the figure.

Real Time Power Consumption monitoring with true power sensor

FAGOR AOTEK has developed a small html5 page that can be displayed in any modern browser. This page (figure 3) presents in real time the power consumption of the three axes, the Spindle and the total machine tool consumption.

Being a web page, it can be accessed from portable devices like smartphones or tablets, what allows visualization at any place in the plant, well in the spirit of industry 4.0.

Internal and External sensor data recording

Architecture for external data, ARTIS and Wago

The Data Recorder can access data from the drives through the Sercos bus. The data accessed in this way is served to the Data Logger with the standard names of the internal signals.

For external data we have used FAGOR, ARTIS  and WAGO with a CANOpen connection. ARTIS has provided the Genior Modular OA system for data pre-processing together with accelerometers and true power sensors.

The connection of true power sensors allows recording of power consumption of the full machine tool, including peripheral components and is a first step towards optimization of energy consumption.

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