Monitoring System
Detect line stress early and very accurately
Maintain heavily stressed and hard-to-reach bus cables faster than ever: This is made possible by i.Sense CF.D - the monitoring module from Igus that comes up with a globally unique function. The module automatically detects the position of stressed areas in a cable and displays them very precisely in meters. Thanks to the new, optical status display, users can now intervene accordingly in a targeted and rapid manner, thereby avoiding time-consuming as well as costly troubleshooting.
Monday morning in an automotive plant: A robot takes care of welding car body parts. Thanks to a 7th axis, the robot moves in a large workspace and is supplied with data via Ethernet cables. A technician opens the control cabinet of the welding robot and wants to know whether all Ethernet lines are working properly. But a glance at the colored signal lights of the i.Sense CF.D monitoring module shows: In one line, the transmission quality is weakening.
Often, three different Ethernet cable types are used on the robot: A static cable from the control cabinet to the e-chain of the 7th axis, a chainflex bus cable in the e-chain system and a chainflex robot cable for the torsional movement on the robot. External influences can cause disturbances in the transmission quality here. But the cables are very long and difficult to reach in many places. "In such cases, searching for and rectifying faults is often tedious and costly," says Richard Habering, head of the smart plastics business unit at Igus, speaking from experience. "That's why we have developed a new function for the i.Sense CF.D monitoring module that is unique in the world to date: an optical status display with precise distance indication of the suspected fault location."
Risk area easily read on OLED display
i.Sense CF.D continuously measures transmission characteristics as well as various, electrical parameters over millions of cycles. Thus, the system not only detects data loss in real time, but also very accurately identifies the location of the stressed area of the line. "With this information, which appears directly on the module's OLED display, users are able to identify the risk area more specifically and faster than ever before, and immediately replace the line of the corresponding segment without trial and error - without additional tools or software costs." Commissioning of i.Sense CF.D is just as fast. Users only need to install the module in the control cabinet and plug the lines to be monitored into the module, then they can get started right away.
Predictive maintenance with i.Cee module
It is just as easy to add i.Cee to the system. The multifunctional module is compact, takes up hardly any space in control cabinets and, just like i.Sense CF.D, can be put into operation in just a few simple steps. A small operation that enables automatic line monitoring, fault management and predictive maintenance planning via digital control. All live line parameters - such as number of strokes and mileage in kilometers - can be aggregated on a dashboard.
Typically, technicians have only two options for maintenance on lines that are subject to high mechanical stress: Either they act reactively, replacing lines when there is already a defect. However, this usually means unnecessarily long and expensive downtimes. Or they replace lines as a precautionary measure at certain intervals and thus accept higher costs if the service life of the lines is not exhausted. i.Cee reshuffles the cards here. The system can automatically trigger an alarm or an emergency stop of the plant when defined limit values are exceeded.
This prevents immense consequential damage or even total failure, which can cost tens of thousands of euros in automotive manufacturing or even in the crane industry, for example. In addition, the i.Cee module automatically calculates the most economical time for maintenance operations and line changes. "It is therefore ideally suited to reducing both maintenance costs and downtimes. Investing in a CF.D module allows a payback in a few months as well as an ROI of over 500 percent per year."