Faruk Mustafic, Author at AUTOMATION INSIGHTS

Famed physicist Albert Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” When the topic of IO-Link comes up, whether a salesperson or technical expert is doing the explaining, I always find it’s too much for the layman without a technical background to understand. To simplify this complex idea, I’ve created an analogy to something we use in our everyday lives: highways.

Prior to the Federal Highway Act of 1956, each individual state, determined the rules of its state highway routes. This included everything from the width of the roads to the speed limits and the height of bridge underpasses — every aspect of the highways that were around at the time. This made long-distance travel and interstate commerce very difficult. It wasn’t until 1956 and the passage of President Eisenhower’s Federal Highway Act, that the rules became standard across the entire United States. Today, whether you’re in Houston, Boston or St. Louis, everything from the signage on the road to the speed limits and road markings are all the same.

Like the standardization of national highway system, the IO-Link Consortium standardized the rules by which devices in automation communicate. Imagine your home as a controller, for example, the roads are cables, and your destination is a sensor. Driving your car to the store is analogous to a data packet traveling between the sensor and the controller.

You follow the rules of the road, driving with a license and abiding by the speed limits, etc. Whether you’re driving a sedan, an SUV or a semitruck, you know you can reach your destination regardless of the state it’s in. IO-Link allows you to have different automation components from different suppliers, all communicating in sync unlike before, following a standard set of rules. This empowers the end user to craft a solution that fits his or her needs using sensors that communicate using the protocols set by the IO-Link Consortium.

Part of calculating the productivity in an injection molding operation is to figure out the maximum number of items you’d be able to produce if everything worked perfectly. Unfortunately, “everything working perfectly” is not something you often see in manufacturing. How can you get closer to that ideal number? One answer lies in a little sensor which can monitor environmental conditions vital to your operation. With it you can reduce your machine downtime and the amount of scrap you produce.

Condition monitoring sensors seem to be taking the automation world by storm. These sensors take various measurements including temperature, ambient pressure, relative humidity, and vibration. They report the data digitally, which makes it easy to track performance. What used to require several sensors now requires only one.

Monitor humidity in plastic granule drying process

Following the plastic injection molding process from beginning to end we can see the usefulness of this one sensor. Plastic granules need to be dried before they go into the machine. If the moisture level is too high, it can cause splay marks to show up on the final product, which then has to be scrapped. This can be costly and can extend lead times if it is not detected early on. The condition monitoring sensor can track ambient humidity so you can stop that problem in its tracks before it creates waste and increases overhead.

Monitor temperature in the injection molding process

One of the biggest variables to any injection molding process is temperature. Some common temperature-related issues in injection molding include blistering, burn marks, degradation of the polymer used, stringiness, and warping. These are caused by temperature variations that cause the resin to be too hot or too cold. Condition monitoring sensors can detect swings in temperature to prevent products having to be scrapped.

Monitor vibration to detect mechanical wear

It’s clear that condition monitoring sensors can helpfully measure environmental factors, but what about mechanical wear? Vibration sensors can monitor mechanical wear on bearings, linear drives, gearboxes and much more by plotting vibration data. It’s even more effective if they measure vibration on more than one axis so you can see the direction of vibration and not just the overall amount. This way you can be proactive and plan your maintenance in advance instead of being in a constant reactive state, trying to patch problems as they come up. Using vibration data gathered by a condition monitoring sensor, you can avoid the costly consequences of unscheduled downtime.

In conclusion there are many different applications that condition monitoring sensors can be used for in injection molding operations. By tracking a variety of different measurements including vibration, temperature, and humidity, you will be able to improve the efficiency and productivity of your entire operation by using this one compact sensor. It provides a low-cost solution so that you can reduce the scrap that is cutting into your profits. And reduce the amount of downtime that causes so many unnecessary headaches. Put these smart sensors to work for you.