Hardwood sawmill, beech and ash, site of several hectares
In a sawmill, four items of equipment watched and belts under predictive maintenance
Band saw, 160 kW main motor
- 160 kWmain motor
- 4control points
- LTE-Mno access to the site network
The scope
What is measured
- Sector
- Sawmill
- Instrumented machine
- Band saw, 160 kW main motor
- Measured quantities
- Vibration: maximum, mean, variance
- Electrical current on three lines
- Temperature
- Belt wear, read from the motor’s vibration
- Detected events
- Lack of lubrication on a conveyor
- Sawdust removal conveyor failure
- Biomass feed blockage
- Achieved result
The four units were installed by the site maintenance team, with the line running. What the deployment asked of the sawmill’s IT network: 0 access requested. The unit reports over LTE-M, on its own SIM card.
The deployment
Control points
Equipment : Log yard · upstream
What is measured : A Syway on the conveyor supply, three current clamps on the line.
What it showed : Missing lubrication, spotted through rising current: the greasing order now follows a reading rather than a round.
Equipment : Band saw · main machine
What is measured : A Sybox on the 160 kW motor that drives the band saw’s belts through pulleys: continuous vibration monitoring.
What it showed : Belt wear shows up in the motor’s vibration and is followed over time: replacement is planned before they break.
Equipment : Waste removal
What is measured : A Sybox on the removal hydraulic unit, vibration monitoring.
What it showed : A failure on the sawdust removal conveyor, identified by the reading before it could stop the band saw.
Equipment : Boiler house
What is measured : A Sybox on the biomass feed hydraulic unit, abnormal vibration detection.
What it showed : Blockages on the feed line, detected before the boiler lost output.
The main machine is no longer stopped by what surrounds it: the inspection rounds have been dropped.
Reading still to come
This deployment has no published figures yet: stoppages avoided, production minutes recovered, the consumption gap before and after greasing. The commissioning date and the observation period are missing too.
Those values exist on the customer’s side and must be approved by them before publication. This site publishes no gain figure without a source; the panel will stay as it is until then.
In operation
What it changed
- Greasing follows a readingMechanical effort drops, consumption comes back down, and the machinery is spared.
- Inspection rounds have been droppedContinuous monitoring replaced the rounds, on a site whose extent is measured in hectares.
- The main machine is no longer stopped by what surrounds itAn ancillary failure is dealt with before it reaches the saw.
- Belts move to predictive maintenanceThey are changed when their wear calls for it, rather than after they break.
Working hardwood puts the machinery under heavy strain. A failure on an ancillary item, removal or pump, stops the main machine, or destroys the value of timber that is still drying. And the belts, under the same strain, wear until they break if nothing follows them.
Each Sybox sends its readings over the LTE-M cellular network, using its own SIM card; the log yard’s Syway transmits to the neighbouring Sybox over low-energy Bluetooth. The site IT network was left untouched, and no address was requested on it.