Water filter monitoring on injection moulding machines
ifm first choice for the beluga system for low-maintenance operation of injection moulding machines
Continuous and transparent filter monitoring
Early warnings
in three levels
Optimum product quality due to lack of blockages
Results
- Continuous and transparent filter monitoring
- Avoiding system failures, product rejects or quality fluctuations
- Energy cost savings through optimised system pressure
- Reduced maintenance effort
The challenge
The companies produce several thousand cooling circuits per year for injection moulding machines, which are mainly used in the plastics or automotive industry. With increasing knowledge of the cooling circuits, the plant operators soon focused their attention on the maintenance-intensive filter installed in the water supply of the injection moulding machines. Clogged or contaminated filters are one of the most common sources of process problems.
For this type of machinery, condition-based maintenance of filters is gaining in importance, as the risk of abrupt failures due to clogged filters is minimised through demand-based filter replacements. Thus, maintenance intervals can be planned more efficiently and downtime costs can be reduced. This gave rise to the idea of developing our own filter monitoring system.
The solution – why ifm?
The smart beluga system monitors filter systems and signals critical conditions in advance according to the traffic light principle. It is based on multi-level electronic differential pressure monitoring and can be easily integrated into production data acquisition systems. The system can be retrofitted into existing filters as well as supplied with the beluga full-flow filters in almost all common sizes and filter meshes. The pressure and flow values are displayed to the maintenance staff by means of a signal lamp. The beluga system can also be easily integrated into higher-level systems using IO-Link or EDGE/SIM. This provides the maintenance department with an optimal overview of the system status at all times, significantly reducing the maintenance effort through preventive maintenance.
Thanks to the beluga monitoring system, the user can intervene at an early stage without causing problems in the process and without constant manual inspection of the filters by the maintenance department. The system eliminates faults caused by clogged filters sustainably and reliably. In addition, the continuous and transparent three-level filter monitoring offers the advantage, beyond pure failure protection, that quality fluctuations and rejects due to cooling problems are avoided. Furthermore, energy costs are saved because pressure losses can be detected and remedied.
