The only maintenance-intensive component of a servomotor is the ball bearing. Analysis shows that a significant portion of servo motor failures occur due to damaged ball bearings. In order to detect this incipient failure at an early stage, the shocks on the motor housing can be measured with externally attached and separately wired piezo sensors. Unfortunately, these external sensors can be damaged by mistake, and take time to install.
”We are able to predict ball bearing failures and, via our service department recommend courses of action to the customer or carry them out ourselves, depending on which service concept the customer has chosen”, says Davide Borghi, Manager of Data Processing & Analytics for Equipment, Tetra Pak.
sHub® and EDS/EDM35 make a powerful team
Together with SICK a more sustainable and integrated solution was developed. Among other things, vibration measuring sensors (MEMs) have been installed inside the servo motor: The sHub® solution of sensors in combination with EDS/EDM35 feedback via HIPERFACE DSL® from SICK is used. Externally, this smart servo drive is therefore indistinguishable from a standard component. The combination of the sHub® with the EDS/EDM35 motor feedback system enables the measured values of vibration of the MEMs and the speed and position of the motor feedback system to be combined. It is thus possible to assign each shock to a high-resolution mechanical position. Additional cabling is not necessary since all data from the servo motor is transmitted via HIPERFACE DSL®. A decisive advantage for downstream data diagnostics is the data acquisition of vibration, speed and position synchronous in the drive with the controller cycle. “This is a decisive advantage over externally mounted CM boxes”, says Clemens Bitsch, Business Development, SICK AG.
