Increasing quality requirements and ever more demanding standards – from drugs and medical equipment to cleaner car engines – make it crucial for manufacturers to ensure error-free and fully documented monitoring of process quality control. However, despite the wide range of sensors and transducers available on the market, end users have often ended up dependent on a specific manufacturer.
The EUREKA E! 3455 FACTORY MONITORING SYSTEM project has developed an innovative and easy-to-use multi-channel measuring and monitoring system for industrial quality control. The high-precision system is able to work with most commercially available sensors and is already starting to find applications in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. A key benefit is the ability to maintain tight processing parameter control over extended periods – up to several weeks in some delicate processes – and provide the documentary evidence required to meet tough standards.
German process control equipment manufacturer Karl Tesar electronik therefore decided to cooperate with long-time partner Swiss control software specialist Messmatik Hiltbrunner in a EUREKA project. FACTORY MONITORING SYSTEM set out to develop a virtually universal measuring and monitoring system able to work with all types of sensors and transducers. Up to 256 different measuring parameters can be recorded or monitored in parallel with full electronic documentation and recording.
Applications include endurance tests of engines, monitoring mechanical processes, safety engineering in tunnelling, and controlling climatic chambers in lamination and coating processes. Developing this new software makes the resulting system simple and easy for customers to configure, while system flexibility makes it easy to substitute for current control systems.
“Cooperation in a EUREKA project helped us find the initial financial support necessary,” explains Karl Tesar, managing director of the German project leader. “It had become increasingly difficult to source components for our existing control systems. The new system offers high speeds and high sample rates over the analogue buses found in industrial process control in high precision industry.”
More information: Karl Tesar, Karl Tesar elektronik, Max-Planck-Strasse, 6-8, D-61184 Karben, Germany, tel: +49 6039 92 43 14, email: k.tesar@tesar-elektronik.de, www.tesar-elektronik.de