Düsseldorf, Germany – Cannon Afros announced today the introduction of OptiWise, an Internet-of-Things predictive maintenance system. OptiWise is immediately available for high pressure mixing heads and pumps for Cannon dosing machines.
The proprietary technology has been developed for the Italian company – a division of Cannon Group – in collaboration with the company’s Automata division.
Speaking on the first day of the K-2022 fair, Cannon Afros sales manager for automotive PU, Stefano Andreolli, said: 'It's a project that we launched five years ago. And it's a long term project in the sense that it will have several steps. What we present today is the first achievement: a predictive algorithm that is making a forecast on the behaviour of the machine, before problems occur on the two main mechanical parts of the machine, which are the pumps and mixing heads.'
Andreolli explained that the system will reduce downtime by keeping the machine working when there is an abnormality that doesn’t critically affect the process: 'It is an active predictive maintenance, in the sense that the operators are notified when the machine starts to behave in an abnormal way, but in a way that is still under the alarm [parameters]. So it is trained to optimise defects and predict when a failure will occur. So, for pumps and mixing as the result is that you will know how long they will last.'
Andreolli said the second step, which the company hopes to implement soon, goes beyond predicting when a failure will occur: 'It will make the predictive maintenance intelligent – in the sense that the machine knows that something is going wrong – and it will automatically adapt the cycles and the parameters in order to extend the life of the mechanical products.
'This is of course a huge benefit for customers because they will not have unpredicted downtime of the machinery and they can plan the maintenance in the right time.'
The third step, Andreolli says, is to add to the algorithm the capability of monitoring the quality of the product, and automatically adjusting the parameters of the machine, so that if there is any deviation from the quality standard set by the customer, the machine will adjust itself. 'Of course, to do this, we need a lot of machines, a lot of data,' said Andreolli.
Cannon Afros is a supplier of dosing systems, mixing equipment, and processing technologies, for polyurethanes and multi-component resins.
