Machinery diagnostics is entering a new era, with new urgency, as industry moves toward better asset management and eventually to unmanned operations. Owners and operators are expecting the advanced machines of the future to have the ability to self-diagnose conditions that could lead to catastrophic failure or to unanticipated down time. Next-level, algorithm-driven associations to yield, machine efficiency, and other operating characteristics that can be defined in terms of the energy associated with known machine processes can also be translated into useful parameters for transmission over a digital data bus.
To reach those goals, Dytran has created CAN-MD®, a cutting edge, digital sensor platform that processes raw analog data inside the sensor, enabling a bussed architecture that delivers actionable results, not raw data. Advanced sensors with on-board digital signal processing (DSP) features are the key to this new machine awareness. The advent of smaller, more powerful microprocessors enables a new generation of bus-based digital vibration sensors to process and reduce analog data inside the sensor itself.
The new technology eliminates the long wire runs to each sensor commonly associated with traditional analog test cell arrangements and replaces it with a single-cable, all-digital bus-based schema. In addition, the improved system architecture provides reduced SWaP (size, weight & power) of traditional onboard VHM (vibration health monitoring) systems, easier troubleshooting and more importantly, distributed processing.
CAN-MD® offers a variety of analog sensor adapters that allow users to add existing sensors to the CAN-MD® network. This extends many of the benefits of the CAN-MD® technology to legacy vibration sensors or other measurement node types. By expanding the measurement input possibilities, it allows the system to provide improved sensor fusion, pulling data from a greater number of nodes to allow users to make data driven decisions based on multiple sensor locations or measurements types. Sensor adapters currently include tachometers, optical blade trackers, IEPE sensors (acceleration, pressure, force) and high temperature charge mode sensors.
Our talk will discuss the digital sensor fusion domain of CAN-MD® technology and our strategy of converting all sensors to a common, bus-based environment.
