John Storm, the Connected Technologies manager for the SKF Group in South Africa, talks about the Rotating Equipment Performance Centre in Johannesburg South Africa, that extends the company’s diagnostic and proactive maintenance service offering.
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SKF’s IMx 8 and 16 data logging systems are ideal for localised, scalable installations in critical, low speed applications using fully wired online sensor systems.
SKF has been offering remote diagnostic services from its Jet Park facilities in South Africa for several years. “SKF’s Remote Diagnostic Centre, as it was called before, underscored that, initially, data collection from the field was exclusively employed for analysis, diagnostics, and reporting services. We have rebranded, however, to The Rotating Equipment Performance (REP) Centre to better represent the broadening of our capabilities, the deepening of our engineering expertise, and the enhancement of our service offerings,” begins John Storm, SKF’s Connected Technologies manager.
“Instead of simply diagnosing and reporting problems to clients, we are now able to feed analysed diagnostics and machine health insights through to our SKF Engineering specialists and engineering partners, who can develop quick-response solutions to problems that might arise in the field,” he explains, adding that this is a faster way of closing the proactive maintenance loop.
SKF, he says, is a knowledge engineering company, and the REP Centre is about transforming key data collected from plant equipment into engineering insights on how to best protect and optimise plant assets.
Since the early 2000s SKF has been cloud-based with respect to connectivity and software, so even though the company moved into new premises recently, no real changes were needed. “But enhancements to our software capabilities are continuous. Most notably we have focused on feeding information through to our different engineering complements – bearings, seals, lubrication, manufacturing, and condition-based maintenance, for example – to make our offering more collaborative and holistic,” Storm tells MechChem Africa.
SKF is also looking at tools that will enable the company to pass on insights gleaned from the REP Centre to the company’s authorised distributors / partner networks. “We are working on a platform that will enable authorised partners to access information, dashboards and reports to help them to better attend to their customers Machinery Health,” he explains.
In terms of the analytical software tools, he says SKF utilises diagnostics and machine learning models to extract useful condition-linked insights. “We can typically diagnose 60 to 70% of all simple applications automatically, using engineering-linked machine learning models, but we still believe in the help of expert professionals for the more complex conditions,” he adds.
“At SKF, we are not trying to develop stand-alone black box systems. Instead, our software uses very open architecture, and we ensure that we can offer a wide range of different integration levels, from local SKF hardware integrated solutions to fully connected cloud-based systems. We acknowledge that our customers are pursuing different analytical approaches and many may have built their own ways of consolidating different data from across the plant. So for us at SKF, integration is key and we have developed capability that keeps onsite implementation simple and very flexible,” John Storm assures.
Entry-Level implementation options
In terms of practical implementation for connecting equipment to SKF’s REP Centre, the first step is to connect the assets by collecting data – using handheld or online data collection devices. “Our emphasis on the quality of raw vibration sensors stems from their capacity to detect a multitude of fault conditions simultaneously in rotating machinery utilizing the SKF hardware—as many as eight distinct bands/conditions per sensor/channel depending on the solution design. By harnessing vibration data, we can pinpoint frequency-related problems unique to each machine. Coupled with customised analytical software and precise machine contexts, we’re able to generate dependable and potent predictive analytics and specific machine failure mode insights,” he explains.
For collecting data and connecting it to networks, Storm says SKF offers different technologies to offer solutions for most applications. At the starting point, he says that hand-held devices such as the SKF Quick Collect hand held sensor or the next generation portable condition monitoring Microlog Analyzer DBx can be used by maintenance teams walking around the site. These instruments integrate with Android or IOS phones and devices so the data can be sent via the cloud to the REP Centre.
As time progresses, maintenance teams can start to build up hierarchies and data-collection routes that best suit their plant needs. In addition, the REP Centre is available to support, do more advanced diagnostics and to identify the early onset of failure and application-specific engineering changes that are needed to keep the equipment healthy.
SKF is also extending its Rotating Equipment Performance service into Africa. “Mining is a key segment for us and we expect significant growth in this market. To drive accessibility to our REP Centre from remote applications across Africa, we have recently released a first-line-of-defence solution called SKF Axios, which is a cost-effective, cloud-based condition monitoring solution with software and dashboards hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS),” John Storm tells MechChem Africa.
Axios consists of a smart wireless vibration sensor that can be mounted to a motor, pump or bearing housing. The sensor connects to a small gateway, and all that is needed to deliver results is internet connectivity – and monitoring and configuration can be provided by any connected smartphone or tablet. “For anyone trying to enter the realm of condition monitoring, this is a very nice entry-level device. The system learns over time, and it narrows down its acceptable thresholds based on the specifications and initial acceptable conditions set up for each machine.
A more permanent level of equipment performance management on offer from SKF is a semi-online solution. These involve the installation of wireless sensors onto plant equipment, which are connected to SKF Enlight Collect IMx-1 gateway devices.
“Our IMx-1 is a wireless mesh-able device that can handle a range of between 20 and 30 m from the sensors sending the data, depending on the density of the plant. The device speaks to a gateway with a 30-50 m point-to-point range from the sensor, which can either be hosted on a local network at the plant, or can link directly to our cloud-hosted software,” he says.
It is possible to have 100 or so sensors connected via a 2.4 GHz wireless mesh network to one gateway. The wireless sensor is an IP69 rated device that’s battery powered and the sensor units are typically scheduled to collect data once a day for an expected nominal battery life of five years.
Protecting critical equipment
The quality of data from The Quick Collect hand-held and Axios or IMX1 wireless systems is more suited to standard high speed applications – above 600 rpm – and lower criticality assets that require less data uploading. But for more advanced applications, which typically involve low speeds and heavy loads, more regular data, a quality data acquisition device is typically needed. “Low speed rotating equipment analytics needs high resolution data in the lower frequency ranges to get the spectral quality for detailed analysis,” Storm explains.
Low speed vibration monitoring is typically associated with critical large and heavy equipment: conveyor drives, crushers, grinding mills and such, he notes. These are often more complex machines in difficult environments on mining sites or fixed processing plants.
For critical, low speed applications, Storm recommends fully wired online sensor systems connected to SKF IMx-8 or IMx-16 data logging systems. Each channel of these devices can synchronize and connect with one vibration sensor or any analogue 4-20 mA sensor or temperature probe for additional machine insights – and the IMx-8 has eight channels while the IMx-16. “These systems capture data based on pre-defined schedules, and thresholds can be set to allow the service provider to be notified immediately of anomalies before the data is further analysed at the REP Centre.
“What we offer through the SKF Rotating Equipment Centre is contextualised data that is directly relevant to the actual application. We are not simply dumping dumb data and hoping we might catch anomalies. Over the years we have established a highly successful approach to condition monitoring of critical assets. We can diagnose problems before they become catastrophic, even to the point where we might be able to salvage a component such as a large critical bearing by taking it out of production, remanufacturing it, and putting it back into the machine or into storage for another full service life,” he says.
“At SKF, we are driven by environmental responsibility and the circular economy. So we are constantly looking to see how long we keep equipment in production, exactly what needs to be changed to prevent damage to other components, and how many times we can remanufacture a component before it needs to be recycled,” he says.
“And we never push plant operators to adopt any single connectivity architecture. We understand that different plants around the world will choose different network environments, so we offer multiple solutions that can easily be integrated into any environment. We offer open architecture and integration possibilities to other onsite applications through API and OPC UA integration at a software level with Modbus TCP/RTU at a hardware level for the IMX 8 & 16, for example. “If there is no Ethernet connectivity, we can use the LTE or GPS wireless networks. In cases where there is no connectivity at all, we can manually download data from SKF devices to a cellular device and then take that device to a location with a data connection for uploading.
“So anyone, anywhere, can easily access SKF Rotating Equipment Performance services. All we need is for them to collect the necessary data and get it uploaded to the Cloud. We can then utilise our engineering expertise and our software and analytical tools to better and more rapidly protect plant equipment and improve operational performance,” John Storm concludes.
