Siemens Offers a New Solution Package Comprising Products and Expert Analytics for Monitoring Presses

Siemens has developed a solution package for monitoring presses comprising Condition Monitoring and Predictive Services for Presses. In addition to hardware components and as part of the service, Siemens is offering its customers expert evaluations and reports on the condition of the press, enabling optimum predictive maintenance. This also makes spare part stocking more effective and provides a transparent overview of the condition of the press. The simple structure and flexible extendibility also allow costs to be kept down. For the modernization of a production press, a Bavarian automotive manufacturer has now opted to use new hardware and software from the Siemens package. This allows, for example, plant downtimes to be reduced as possible damages or faults are recognized and remedied early.

The automaker runs a press in which the whole control and drive technology has been replaced as part of a retrofit. The new solution comprises Simatic S7 and Simatic IPC 677D with WinCC. The drive consists of a Sinamics converter and a Simotion Motion Control System. The condition monitoring system (CMS) which, amongst other things, monitors the main drive on the press, was fitted with the Siemens Siplus CMS4000 system as well as CMS X-Tools. Part of the new hardware was located in the control cabinet. Signals from 29 vibration sensors and 24 force sensors are captured by the Siplus CMS4000 and these form the basis of vibration monitoring on the main drive train. Vibration signals measured by the CMS here and on other parts of the press are sent to the CMS X-Tools where they are analyzed, visualized and archived.

 Complete package of products and expertise

"The components installed on the press, the CMS and the associated services allow us to provide everything from a single source: Hardware, software and our expert knowledge – effectively a turn-key solution," explains Patrick Volkmann, Portfolio Manager at Siemens. The approach with Predictive Services for Presses has three distinct stages: Initially, experts from Siemens and the customer discuss the specific applications, including potential sources of error. Then sensors, software and hardware are installed and all the components are connected to the cloud. Finally, experts from Siemens evaluate the captured data and provide the customer with a quarterly report. Siemens is currently working with the analytics partner ISPredict to produce algorithms which will support the experts' work or even automate them to some degree.