Blog3 - EN

Maintenance of a FFU Plant

It speaks for the process equipment if you do not take note about it. After almost 10 years trouble free operation of a FFU-plant with EC-fans from Nicotra||Gebhardt the owner decided to let someone check whether if anything is fine or not. As the FFU Server is not linked to the Internet and the whole system including Inline-I/O-station as well as the old OPC-DA link are still in fine operation and no intentions to use some virtual solutions for the FFU-Control exist, we feel confident to state ‘currently no changes recommended, probably a slightly higher maintenance frequency is not a bad idea’.

Almost traditionally trips to the technology hot spot in Jena are scheduled by train. The way home at the lower train way creates unbelievable joy.

Automation of a FFU Plant

In week 41 the commissioning of our largest single 2021-project took place. From now on a FFU-Server including 4 structural layers is controlling up to 2.000 FFUs. Therewith our design- und programming efforts have been concluded worthy. Due to the size of the plant and its geometrical distances from the central FFU-Server to the EC-FFUs the communication to the 6 Gateway was realized by individual fibre links. Inside the FFU-Server an OPC-UA Server is integrated. It allows access to all data points, of each FFU individually, group wise or by structures along a customer FSM.

Due to the order volume and for the general importance the order had highest priority. Consequently we accomplished our tasks on the Server in advance of the commissioning close to perfection. Therewith we had enough time to support the customer by the communication checks and address-building works on site. Therefor once more two EC-fan control devices from our house has been used.

2 Years Monitoring of Telemetry Modules of a Water Supplier

For more than 2 years we have been observing a telemetry network applied at a fresh water pipe network of our local water supplier.

Our system is running full automatically and supplies reports to our customer that includes the battery charge levels of the applied modules.

The Frontend is designed as modern Single Page App that runs at each modern browser. It shows battery charge levels, battery changing intervals and the GSM-signal. Furthermore all values can be prepared graphically and shown as time chart.

The Backend is using a data base server that shows more than 100.000 entries already. Consequently the relevant values can be observed automatically and errors be seen. The battery charge states of the data log devices are separated to 3 levels what helps to optimize service trips, saves driving time and consequently costumer’s money.

Extension of a FFU Control Centre

Recently a great research company in the north of Hamburg enlarged its cleanroom capacities. Therefore FFUs with EC-fans from Nicotra||Gebhardt were purchased that should be integrated to the existing FFU-Control-Centre. The owner purchased this service directly from us. We are delighted about such jobs, as they are normally executable without major tools. Hence the trip can be scheduled climate-friendly and comfortable by train. Rarely more than a  control device , to scan the FFU-lines with the ec-drives, and a laptop is required.

At the end there were only winners, the costumer was getting professional first-hand service, Nicotra||Gebhardt appreciates it’s FFU-control-partner, we have been able to do some day-to-day business utterly relaxed at the train trip and not to forget our environment.

Particularities of Brushless-DC Motors – Part II

… recently we reported about Brushless-DC Motors, that worked, driven be the overpressure in a cleanroom, as generators. The charged, along the back-emf diodes of their IGBTs, the DC-link at least partly that the switching power supply and therewith the communication started. As there is no correct charge of the PFC this is an undefined state so the mainly created FF-command sequences interfered the Gateway where the units still were connected to. The Gateways however interpreted this wrong and was brought out of step.

The solution was rather simple, a slight modification of the interrupt routine (IRQ) was done just to block the interrupt at the crucial point. So from now on the Brushless-DC drives can operate as Brushless-DC Generators and talking half asleep to the network without interfering their proper working colleagues.

Remote Commissioning of a S7-Controll for a Cooling System

Due to the pending quarantine regulations in China that requires a couple of additional days if not weeks, we decided to go for a remote commissioning of a cooling system together with our partner Kälteconcept using Skype and Teamviewer.

The plant itself, a subcritical CO2 Fluid-cooling-appliance was in central china, used in a wind tunnel of a Chinese Automobile Company, is designed for up to 850 kW cooling power. It consists of 2 parallel compound lines with 3 CO2 compressors each, partially controlled by VFDs.

Practically it was done with Tia-Portal V15 on a S7-1500 CPU with a TP900 Comfort-panel. The special feature is a Pre-Error-Archiv was saves, in case of a fault, all relevant system data for the last 30s BEFORE the error occurred.

Finally it was a total success with only winners. The end user saved some money and was practically forced to an intensive training, we avoided a long commissioning trip with a unpleasant quarantine and finally the environment wins by avoiding flight traffic. A random view at the sky above our house compared to one on feb. 21rd in 2012 speaks for itself.