Contributed by: Sciemetric Staff
What is the data that matters to effectively monitor and control your process?
It of course depends on the process. What’s important is that you have the means to capture, analyze and visualize that data, whatever form it may take, for quick and effective issue resolution.
That’s the role of the new Sciemetric EDGE, a platform for industrial monitoring and process control.
The Sciemetric EDGE was designed with the flexibility to be able to monitor virtually any industrial process. At The Assembly Show 2019, we accepted the challenge to prove it—by monitoring a popcorn machine!
No kernel goes unnoticed with the Sciemetric EDGE
That’s right – popcorn. It is, after all, a perfect self-contained example of batch manufacturing.
We set up a Sciemetric EDGE module with two channels for analog or digital input to collect information from a deployed sensor.
In this case, that sensor was audio – a microphone. Using the Sciemetric EDGE Studio software data analytics platform, the Sciemetric EDGE modules were configured to capture a specific event that consistently occurred at a specific frequency – the sound of a popcorn kernel popping.
The raw data from an entire cycle (a cycle being the popping time of an entire batch) was visualized as a raw waveform using the data analytics platform. From this, the number of events, or pops, per cycle (which averaged around 1,600) could be tracked.
This raw data could be further manipulated using the Sciemetric EDGE Studio software to highlight individual pops, track pop rate per second, max pops per batch and other metrics that could trend the quality and the consistency of one batch versus another.
When it comes to popcorn, the quality and consistency of a batch and how many kernels remain unpopped is a factor of time, uneven or inadequate heat and the internal moisture of the kernel. Too little time, too little heat and too little internal moisture are all possible reasons when a kernel does not pop.
With the appropriate sensors and software configurations, all of these variables can be measured and tracked against batch quality. Learn more about how the Sciemetric Edge can be an asset in your industrial monitoring process.
Watch this video for more, which features Product Launch Manager Robert Ouellette as he explains the process as it happens right on the floor of The Assembly Show 2019.
Sciemetric EDGE: A powerful monitoring and control platform flexible to your needs
This is but one example of how Sciemetric EDGE can be used for data acquisition and measurement to improve monitoring and control of virtually any controlled process in the industrial market.
This draws on Sciemetric’s decades of expertise with process signature verification (PSV). That waveform (also called a digital process signature or trace) contains a wealth of information about an industrial test or process. With any controlled process – press fitting, leak testing, welding, power monitoring, machine monitoring or even popcorn production –– the signature is repeatable and consistent when parts and machines are meeting specifications.
With EDGE, you gain the power to drill into that signature data and understand, not only what is happening in your process, but why, so that you can take the right steps to improve it.