Reintegration of a Bearing Sealing Test Bench
PCM needed an application to configure channels, security and acquisition to acquire, display and record data from the sensors. This application should also manage the safety of the bearing seal test bench in order to reintegrate it into the test room to speed up the tests.
Phalanx has designed a turnkey data logger type application for new generation compactDAQ equipment, fun and intuitive, interacting directly with the sensors and relays of the test bench. This application only controls the test bench in the case of safety devices. No other piloting action is carried out.
An application serving not only a department but a company.
PCM is a leader in the management of industrial pumping solutions. This company is present in six industrial sectors: environment, new energies, paper industry, mining and minerals, chemicals and mechanical engineering. PCM is a leading manufacturer of progressive cavity pumps (PCP), a technology to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry. PCM is also a leader in the manufacture of pumps and pumping systems for the food industry. This company continues to innovate and its core business remains unchanged.
It is in this spirit of innovation that PCM's testing department called on Phalanx to reintegrate the bearing seal test bench into the test room in order to speed up the tests. PCM using NI hardware, the application was developed under LabVIEW. The project immediately turned to the realization of a data logger for CompactDAQ.
A functional and flexible software
Our application created from LabVIEW allows you to configure the channels of the CompactDAQ modules used, security and acquisition (acquisition frequency, choice of mode) for data acquisition and recording. A maximum of 30 sensors can be connected to CompactDAQ through NI 9203, NI 9211, and NI 9215 modules to acquire signals. A total of eight safeties can be configured to shut down the test bench by activating relays via the NI 9482 module.
In order to facilitate the maintenance of the software and to make it more modular, we have implemented the management of certain parameters via initialization files. A configuration file specifies the location of access to the email addresses file and the paths where screenshots and data recording files will be stored. A unite.ini file represents the database of units used.
In view of the different types of sensors used and therefore their units, the choice of recording as a TDMS file proved to be the best solution.
When launching the application, the user arrives on the configuration page, from which he can choose to add, modify or delete a channel and / or a security, save and load parameters and configure email addresses. The user has the choice between two modes: a countdown mode (acquisition and recording for a defined time), and a free mode (triggering of recording manually). Once the settings have been made, the user can access three other pages, "Acquisition", "Security" and "Channel". The "Acquisition" page allows you to start the acquisition, view the data on graphs and take screenshots. On the "Safeties" page, you can find all the safeties that have been configured as well as the state of the relays. The "channels" page displays all the configured channels.
Creation of a fun, intuitive and personalized application
Throughout the project, PCM made clear its desire to obtain software that is easy to learn, fun and personalized. So we used tools native to LabVIEW, such as an Xcontrol, custom controls and indicators to make the application more professional. Thanks to the event management, a full screen display behavior of the graphics was possible. This software has also been developed so that it can be used in different countries thanks to its language selection function. At the moment, the application can be used in French, English and Spanish. The use of this software allows any user to achieve a high level of configuration of his CompactDAQ.
Conclusion and perspectives
Programming in LabVIEW allowed us to save development time, but also to produce scalable, readable, modular and maintainable code.
Thus, this data logger differs from others by a freedom of configuration of CompactDAQ, the possibility of acquiring all types of data (temperature, flow, pressure, torque, force, etc.), safety management when using relays (a relay can monitor several channels), and the possibility given to the user to choose the graph on which he wants to display the parameterized channel (s).
At this time, the software is limited to using the following modules: NI 9203, NI 9211, NI 9215, and NI 9482. Therefore, we are considering incorporating more modules in the future.
In a future development, the software will be developed on CompactRIO with the use of a camera. A history of triggered security will be recorded. In addition, currently, triggering a security causes the acquisition to stop, a window appears with the security engaged, and finally the ability to send an email. One perspective is sending an SMS or making a phone call to the person on call. Ultimately, we may consider bringing a product to market for companies wishing to use turnkey software.
