When maintenance team members prepare to work on an asset, they often ask themselves “how can they tell if they have the correct alignment data for that machine?” It might seem like the answer should be obvious, but when many plants house an array of large machines, it’s not. And there’s no room for error in this situation.
Aligning a particular machine with the historical information of different assets not only wastes time but can have serious consequences, including impacting its performance. Thermal growth information, dimensions, and RPM values that are used to set coupling tolerance limits often vary and must be applied to the correct asset.
However, using RFID tags on assets in combination with Adaptive Alignment systems—such as the OPTALIGN touch, ROTALIGN touch and ROTALIGN touch EX—from PRUFTECHNIK can help solve these problems. Our systems are equipped with software to “read” asset tag data encoded with RFID, which stands for radio-frequency identification.
Get a complete alignment history of the asset
You’re probably familiar with RFID, a technology that uses electromagnetic fields to identify and track tags attached to objects automatically. It’s used for everything from access control and car key fobs to personal ID cards and asset tracking.
RFID identification software is integrated into PRUFTECHNIK systems, enabling them to automatically read a machine’s RFID tag and save relevant information. Companies that utilize these tags also provide their technicians with an alignment and maintenance history of the equipment that is helpful to all – but especially to new or inexperienced maintenance team members.
Technicians can view a complete alignment history of the asset with the connected ARC 4.0 (Alignment Reliability Center) PC software, track the alignment of individual assets over time (alignment trend), and investigate deeper causes of frequent misalignments. RFID also makes alignment data a dynamic condition monitoring parameter for asset management and condition-based maintenance programs.
Using the RFID reader and corresponding RFID tags:
- Enables maintenance teams to clearly identify the equipment that needs to be aligned
- Stores measurement results, machine templates, and RFID data into touch device asset data
- Allows teams and engineers to quickly check the most recent alignment conditions
- Automatically saves new alignment results
Built-in RFID technology is part of the powerful Adaptive Alignment feature set built into PRUFTECHNIK systems. To learn more, please visit this webpage to download our Adaptive Alignment white paper.