Housing-mounted bearings are essential in many applications across a wide range of process industries, including mining, aggregates, cement, and food and beverage. Mounted bearings are used in bulk material handling conveyors that move aggregates, cement, sand, gravel or grain during the manufacturing process. You'll also find bearings in a food or beverage factory, moving products or bottles. Another common application is air treatment, with bearings mounted on industrial fans. The bearing supports are easy to install and their housings offer greater protection, which helps in this type of application.
Maintaining control over bearing performance is critical. Bearing failure can lead to costly downtime, not only due to lost production but also secondary damage. Additionally, bearings are often located in remote or hard-to-reach locations, which makes regular inspections difficult and time-consuming and also poses safety concerns for workers. Smart sensors can help resolve some of the performance issues and safety concerns associated with mounted bearings.
Common Challenges
Although there are many types of bearings, smart sensors are used in standard cast iron, cast ball bearings, and spherical roller bearings, all with supported housings. They can also be used in tapered roller bearings.
As mentioned, routine maintenance introduces safety risks as workers work around rotating equipment or try to reach difficult or dangerous bearings. With traditional maintenance methods, the user has little visibility into when component failure may occur. The ability to monitor bearings remotely with smart sensors allows maintenance personnel to obtain a safe check of bearing health without touching the equipment.
While there are other common challenges, this article focuses on the two critical issues with mounted bearings: vibration and overheating.
Face challenges
To address some key challenges associated with assembled bearings, ABB conducted extensive customer research that indicated they wanted help maintaining and troubleshooting bearing products. One of the main reasons for this is demographic changes. Many highly skilled maintenance workers are approaching retirement age. These are specialists who can often diagnose bearing problems based on small changes in sounds or temperatures. Companies have difficulty finding replacements with so much experience and knowledge in practical mechanics.
The survey also found that many end users did not fully understand condition monitoring technology or how to evaluate condition monitoring data. Some companies outsource this task, but this is expensive. Often the analysis is carried out by people who are not carrier experts. Some customers interviewed had already implemented a condition monitoring program. However, many others did not have the resources or considered the current cost of analysis too high.
It was clear, however, that most customers saw the benefit in monitoring the health of their key assets and the resulting increase in uptime. Many customers interviewed also believe that the Internet of Things (IoT) will have a significant impact on reducing barriers that previously prevented the spread of condition monitoring solutions.
In essence, the research identified the need for a low-cost, easy-to-use condition monitoring system that meets most customer requirements.
Check the condition of the mounted bearings
As a result, a new smart sensor for assembled bearings was developed to inform factory operators when a bearing's performance shows signs of difficulty. Smart sensor technology assesses bearing condition based on temperature and vibration information and provides early indications of potential problems. A bearing that overheats, for example, may indicate that proper lubrication procedures are not in place. Vibration issues can indicate possible problems with the system. Based on the information collected by the sensor, operators can decide when to replace the bearing to avoid catastrophic failures, which can generate safety and cost benefits. Built-in diagnostic capabilities also reduce the need for condition monitoring analysts. With the information provided by the sensor, operators can determine how equipment operating under different operating conditions affects the life of the machine. This information helps them know when to order replacement parts and how to optimize maintenance and repair programs.
The smart sensor for mounted bearings is part of the digital powertrain concept, an expanded digital service offering that provides end users with integrated monitoring and analysis of other powertrain assets, including drives, motors and pumps. Connecting all of these devices can improve the performance, reliability and efficiency of all powertrain components.
Installation
Because the smart sensor is wireless, installation costs tend to be lower than traditional sensor technology. Installed sensors also reduce or eliminate the need for maintenance visits to monitor equipment or take readings with portable instruments. The smart sensor mounts directly to a bearing housing using simple tools. Newer bearing housings accept the sensor and a retrofit adapter is also available for the installed base. For example, Dodge mounted pads are sensor ready with drilled, tapped and tapped installation holes. The smart sensor is installed by removing the plug and inserting the sensor into the provided socket. The sensor is activated by pressing an LED activation switch.
The sensor incorporates accelerometers to measure vibration and temperature sensors to measure bearing temperature and the temperature inside the sensor. The sensor housing is sealed to maintain ATEX certification.
Connectivity
Smart technology such as Bluetooth protocol is used to connect the sensor to Android or iOS cell phones using an app or through a gateway to connect to the customer's monitoring platform or reliability system. This simplifies the process for operators because they can access one interface to check the condition of their bearings or motors.
A mobile app provides a quick overview of your health status and also provides basic information about temperature and vibration measurements. If traders want to view more detailed information, users can look at trend lines or extract data to perform their own analysis.
When bearings are in hard-to-reach locations, out of reach of mobile devices, sensor data can be automatically sent via Bluetooth Low Energy to the monitoring platform via a gateway. Twenty of these sensors can be connected to a gateway.
Cyber security
The smart sensor for mounted bearings includes free access to the ABB Ability digital platform and is designed to adhere to strict safety measures. In particular, this covers data ownership, as the operator will always be the owner of your data and it cannot be accessed by anyone outside your company unless you have permission.
The sensor is protected from unwanted access through 16-bit personal identification number (PIN) authentication. This PIN can be changed during commissioning and during normal use of the sensor, while PIN acceleration that limits the number of attempts to guess a PIN prevents brute force attacks. All sensor measurements are encrypted in accordance with the recommendation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Conclusion
Intelligently mounted bearing sensors, working with other condition monitoring tools, can provide information about asset health conditions that can help operators maximize process uptime. This forms an integral element of a digital powertrain concept that connects drives, motors, pumps and bearings to improve uptime and productivity. Armed with insights from powertrain data, operators can better connect with their assets and make better decisions to ensure safe, reliable and efficient operations.
