

SAVING TIME BY DESIGN
In a fast-moving process-manufacturing environment, down-time is a major cost factor. While some interruptions to production are inevitable, minimizing lost time is a priority, and Smart Sensors offer big benefits here, saving time by design.
PLUG-AND-PLAY REPLACEMENT
Once initial commissioning is completed, 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. Down-time and the associated maintenance cost is kept to a minimum.
CYCLICAL AND EVENT-BASED REPORTING
The Smart Sensor’s predictive-maintenance capabilities rely on its ability to collect both process data and event data, as well as making use of its on-board cumulative-data stores. Not only can maintenance engineers monitor long-term equipment behavior, they also have confidence in the sensor’s ability to flag any one-off threshold exceptions that require attention.
THRESHOLD EXCEPTIONS
The sensor’s records cumulative data for distance, cycle count and temperature, with alarm thresholds set for each. Cumulative cycle-count limits for the expected life of the equipment being monitored are programmed into the sensor memory, and a threshold alarm is triggered when the set value is exceeded, typically via IO-Link, although a high-speed SIO output may be used instead. In the case of distance and temperature, a single, ultimate limit for each parameter is set, and any measurement that exceeds either limit is sufficient to trigger an alarm; in this instance, a high-speed SIO signal is almost certainly the preferred option.