Electronic Monitoring With Simon Jagers

Impact the environment and your bottom line with better monitoring.

In this episode, James interviews Simon Jagers, founder of Semiotic Labs. Semiotic Labs creates and markets smart machine-monitoring technologies and Simon is a passionate advocate for the power of this technology to reduce wasted time, energy, and costs. Simon walks us through the motor monitoring systems popular today and how modern motor current signature analysis (MCSA) and a web connection allows monitoring to be done safer and more cost-efficient than ever.

“It’s no longer ‘Oh, it’s the third Friday of the month let’s fix the fans,’ it is ‘Are the fans broken? If not, we can do something else beneficial for the company.’”

Simon walks us through how and why they monitor devices like a low voltage motor and pump. When that pump starts to cavitate in fluids, it introduces implosions that eat away your pump. This has a specific vibration that travels through the pump to the motor. The vibration disturbs the air gap between the static and rotating aspect of the motor. The monitor can pick up these unique cavitation vibrations and this allows us to make a distinction between the possible  failure mechanisms at play.

MCSA devices are also extremely useful when you want to monitor a motor but it is within a hazardous or difficult to operate environment. Extreme heat or beneath the water, for example. The operating range of the monitor systems means that MCSA allows your sensor to remain safe while monitoring.

The typical MCSA sensor set-up contains 3 voltage sensors with several options for voltage measurement and ways to connect it to a power source and data storage. It takes roughly 2-4 weeks for the sensor to calibrate or to ‘learn’ a unique machines patterns. After that adjustment period,  it is good to go. A company can begin to shift from calendar maintenance to data-driven maintenance.

With the rising costs of downtown and the difficulty of finding qualified staff, online monitoring is on the rise. “Failure is expensive and colleagues are rare,” Simon says he would put his money on MCSA to be the winner in the future of the industry. It is safe to install and can monitor the types of acids that are hard to reach and in dangerous environments. You only need a cable wire, 4g or wifi and connection to the platform. The only other consideration is being able to physically install the sensors.

Since the monitor is usually installed in the control cabinet, it is in the safest space in an industrial environment. The devices can detect 90% of failures four months in advance.

While touting the benefits of the technology, Simon also makes a cautionary statement on the ‘digitization’ of the industry “I’ve never seen an application fix a pump.”

Lastly, James and Simon touch on the fact that better energy monitoring helps to reduce energy waste and can be a boon to environmental endeavors (40% of all global electricity is used by AC motors).

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic’s LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Simon Jaeger Links:

• semioticlabs.com
• Simon Jagers LinkedIn
• Semiotic labs on Twitter
• Semiotic Labs on Linkedin
• Researchgate
• IEEE
• Google Scholar
• Researchgate

182-Electronic Monitoring With Simon JagersJames Kovacevic

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