CONVEYOR MAINTENANCE
Back in control Svendborg, an Altra Industrial Motion brand, has developed a case that enables its experts to commission conveyor brakes from their desks. THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS thrown a spanner into Altra Industrial Motions’ maintenance and installation plans across conveyor sites, as new safety restrictions limit who can attend a site. This created a conundrum for Altra Motion which would typically support its customers with face-toface commissioning.The company’s Svendborg Brakes experts ensure the company provides the best service quality possible. COVID-19 and mobility restrictions threatened this capability, which is why it developed the Universal Control Case (UCCase). The case is a smart technology service tool that enables the remote monitoring of product performance and can help provide insights for maintenance assessment. Importantly, it allows remote support on standard and SOBO Svendborg Brakes during commissioning and service. Christoffer Bjerremand, Project Manager for the Svendborg Brakes UCCase, says the case is simple to hook up, requires no training and can be done
The UCCase is compact and can support high-quality brake commissioning.
by following instructions in the manual. “We can send the case to a customer; they connect it to the SOBO PLC and use their phone to connect it to the internet,” he says. “From there, the sensor sends signals to the cloud, and our team of specialists can take over, using complex algorithms to troubleshoot any faults in the system.” Altra Motion Australia’s experts,
Experts can use the UCCase to diagnose brake system behaviour with analytical models.
32 І Australian Bulk Handling Review: November/December 2021
through the UCCase, can diagnose brake system behaviour with analytical models, which they can use to provide advice on which actions to take to prevent a malfunction. It has already proved immensely useful. For example, in 2020, a customer in Belarus needed support for commissioning. However, due to COVID-19 restrictions and political instability, it wasn’t easy to arrange for a technician to visit the site. Bjerremand says the project was extensive and couldn’t afford to wait, so Svendborg sent the UCCase. “Instead of our technician being there, he was at his desk while the customer’s onsite technician used the case to give us remote access.” The technology has been designed to be backwards compatible and can even work with SOBO units that are decades old. A drilling ship had a 20-year-old SOBO system that needed planned maintenance at a harbour in Italy. Unfortunately, the customer uninstalled the old system, and a technician was supposed to arrive onsite to reinstall a new one.
