Company Announcement - The Wireless Machine Condition Sensor from global bearings and engineering solutions specialist, SKF, provides condition monitoring on rotating machinery operating at large plants and is also suitable for hazardous and hard to reach locations. The ATEX Zone 0 certified sensor provides dynamic vibration and temperature data for condition monitoring and machinery diagnostic applications in hazardous environments typically found in petrochemical, oil & gas and pharmaceutical plants.

The Sensors use a wireless gateway, the WirelessHart communication protocol, to communicate with each other, creating a mesh network. Communication capabilities include relaying data from one node to another, relaying data back to the gateway, and receiving automated commands from the Wireless Sensor Device Manager software that initiates the measurement and processing circuits to take data and transmit it back over the network. If a node is unable to receive signals directly from the WirelessHART gateway, it will instead send and receive its data through a nearby node that can pass the data to and from the gateway – ultimately creating the mesh network.

Once data is collected, the WirelessHART gateway communicates with the Wireless Sensor Device Manager software supplied by SKF.  The Device Manager then automatically exports the data into SKF @ptitude Analyst, a comprehensive diagnostic and analytic software package, where a plant engineer can analyse the data and determine a course of action. In addition to monitoring rotating machinery in large plants and in hard to reach locations, this type of communication protocol and network also provides seamless monitoring capabilities in areas where traditional WiFi communications, wired systems or hand-held devices cannot operate.

This Wireless Machine Condition Sensor presents a safer approach to machine monitoring with enhanced employee and machine safety and delivers overall reduced condition monitoring costs through improved maintenance programs, reduced maintenance costs, reduced installation costs and compatibility with the established SKF @ptitude Analyst software suite to end-users.

Both the sensor and router node are combined into one compact and battery-operated unit the size of a typical industrial accelerometer. Because the SKF Wireless Machine Condition Sensor operates in a low power consumption mode, the battery lasts for years in the field.