Summary
When bending and forming heavy steel or aluminum plates and strips, monitoring roller deformation and eccentricity is essential to avoid significant scrap costs. Taking machines out of service to inspect rollers causes unacceptable levels of downtime, driving designers to identify real-time solutions. Smart Distance Measurement Sensors (DMS) from Swiss manufacturer Contrinex deliver actionable information about the condition of a roller, on demand and in real time – including during rolling operations.
Customer values:
- Rugged inductive DMS Smart Sensors eliminate downtime, delivering actionable information about roller condition in real time
- Availability of on-demand data removes time pressure on maintenance teams, making it possible to correct faults before product defects occur
- V2A (AISI 303) stainless-steel M18 DMS sensors provide a robust, cost-effective solution to the problem
- Industry-standard IO-Link connectivity enables quick, easy integration to the machine control system for process data
- Cumulative data, including temperature and operating-cycle count, is recorded in on-board data storage
- Individual device configurations are stored locally, allowing plug-and-play replacement of sensors when needed
- The Smart Sensor’s dual-channel capability enables a high-speed binary SIO output to be triggered by an event-based exception
- Proven technology ensures highly reliable fit-and-forget operation with no manual intervention
Product Specific Advantages:
- Robust, metal-cased inductive Smart Sensors are ideal for easy integration
- Multi-channel monitoring circuitry allows users to define multiple customized output thresholds
- Sophisticated sensing electronics deliver high-precision multi-mode measurements
- High-speed device-to-device communication enables decentralized data-processing and decision making
- Smart Sensors are individually shielded and EMC immune, eliminating interference when multiple devices operate in close proximity
- Dedicated service-data blocks hold device-specific data including product ID, location and serial number
- Visible LED indicators enable sensors to self-identify on demand, simplifying commissioning and trouble-shooting routines
- Industry-standard -25°C to +70°C operating range
Customer Application
Bending and forming heavy metal plates and strips, particularly in steel or aluminum, requires considerable investment in industrial rolling plant, with a consequent need to maintain high levels of uptime and productivity. Key to this is monitoring roller deformation and eccentricity, as these are common causes of out-of-tolerance production and can result in significant scrap costs.
 Production engineers rely on regular measurement of both parameters to enable corrective action to be taken before product quality suffers. Traditionally, this required machines to be taken out of service to enable the necessary measurements to be taken, not only putting unwanted time pressure on maintenance teams but also making it almost impossible to detect every occurrence before product defects occur.
 The advent of robust distance-measurement sensors, characterized by exceptionally high accuracy, has driven designers to identify real-time solutions, eliminating avoidable downtime. The need is for rugged, high-performance devices, suitable for harsh industrial environments, that communicate seamlessly with modern control systems. Accuracy and reliability must go hand-in-hand with cost-effectiveness, giving an attractive price-performance ratio.
Customer Solution
Designers elected to take advantage of high-resolution Smart Distance Measurement Sensors (DMS) from industry-leading Swiss manufacturer Contrinex. By fitting a semi-permanent, but demountable, crossbar along the top roll of a three-roll bending machine, supporting six stainless-steel M18 DMS sensors at regular intervals, the engineering team implemented a robust, cost-effective solution to the problem.
With the sensors positioned immediately adjacent to the surface of the roller, and with a measurement accuracy to within fractions of a millimeter, they deliver actionable information about the condition of the roller, on demand and in real time – including during rolling operations. The design of the mounting brackets offers additional protection for the sensors, further protecting these rugged all-metal devices from accidental damage.
 These embeddable, one-piece V2A (AISI 303) stainless-steel M18 Smart DMS Sensors, which have a nominal 10-mm sensing distance for carbon steel, are highly robust and resistant to vibration and mechanical shock. Capable of measuring both lateral and axial displacement directly, these devices also record cumulative data, including operational cycle count and temperature, with customer-specific alarm thresholds for each parameter programmed into the sensor memory.
 IO-Link connectivity, standard across the range, provides an easy industry-standard interface to the central control system for routine process data. During initial calibration, each sensor’s configuration is stored automatically on the local IO-Link Master; this allows plug-and-play replacement of sensors should the need arise, without any loss of functionality and without any need for recalibration. Designed with the needs of OEMs and system integrators in mind, Smart Sensors provide an unobtrusive fit-and-forget solution