WHEN ‘SMART PLASTICS’
MAKE MORE ISENSE
Industry buzz words such as
‘machine learning’, ‘big data’ and
‘Industry 4.0’ often hide the real
potential customer benefits from
digitisation.
Intelligent products such as igus
smart plastics, for example, enable
companies to increase the reliability
of their systems, plan maintenance
tasks accurately and thus save
costs.
Igus, available through Treotham
Automation, has been developing a
family of products since 2016 under
the heading 'isense', where various
sensors and monitoring modules
add intelligence to plastic solutions
such as energy chains, cables, linear
guides and slewing ring bearings.
They measure among other things
the wear during the operation and
alert the user early enough to plan
repair or replacement.
By networking using the igus
communication module (icom),
the online status and alert display,
for example via a PC, tablet or
smartphone, is just as possible as a
direct integration into the customer's
infrastructure. These smart plastics
are already predicting the service life
of numerous customer applications,
such as in the automotive industry.
They are continuously developed in
close cooperation with customers.
The improved isense modules,
which use sensors to collect data
from the energy chain, cable, linear
guide or slewing ring bearing, are
equipped with a serial interface
and can be easily integrated into a
control cabinet.
A data logger allows the storing of
values on an SD card. The data
measured by the different isense
systems are then sent wirelessly
to the icom module, summarised
and processed. The customer has
the choice of various concepts for
integration into their own infrastructure.
In this way there is an option
for the icom to send the data from
the sensors to a PC or integrate
the data via the computer into the
existing software environment and
intranet solution.
In addition, a connection to the
igus data centre is possible. In this
case, the maintenance recommendations
via machine learning and AI
algorithms are constantly compared
and defined with the experiences
of many existing applications,
for example in the large igus test
laboratory spread over a floor area of
2,750 square metres.
"Due to the numerous test findings
that are fed into the online service life
calculators, we are able to predict
precisely how long an e-chain
will work reliably in a particular
application," says Richard Habering,
head of the newly established smart
plastics business unit at igus. "The
isense components provide the
customer with additional safety
through a permanent service life
update. This is because it includes
the current ambient conditions of the
actual application. Maintenance and
replacement occurs only when it is
really essential. This saves time and
maintenance costs."
SPECIAL FEATURE: PLASTICS
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