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finding viable solutions to obsolete components. Counter inputs are fully synchronised with analogue,
Redesigns are an option, but frequently entail costly CAN bus and other data sources to enable easy
development, testing and requalification’s. Working applications such as balancing, order tracking and
directly with semiconductor suppliers is often not rotational and torsional vibration.
an option as most suppliers are reluctant to allow
access to intellectual property other than to their
Implementing Preventive Maintenance using
normal partners. Finding replacements in the ‘grey
Wireless Telemetry
market’ is possible but can be risky and only provide
a temporary fix. Also exhibiting at Instrumentation Live was preventive
maintenance and wireless telemetry specialist
Rochester Electronics’ Design and Technology
Mantracourt.
Group has therefore specialised in the provision
of replicated alternatives that meet the exact With unscheduled downtime costing global
performance specifications of the original device. manufacturing some $50 billion a year Mantracourt
These product replications differ from alternatives has applied wireless telemetry to preventive
based on emulations, which simply attempt to maintenance providing 24/7 monitoring capability.
mimic the functionality of the original device. They provided an interesting case study to illustrate.

Product replication includes working with the Habasit, a leading conveyor belt specialist, wanted
original OCM and is an exact physical and electrical to embed a wireless force-sensing link in one of its
duplicate with output edge-rate matching. Pin-for- spiral food conveyor systems to improve preventive
pin construction, identical die size and matched maintenance.
cycle-for-cycle timing mean that the component is
Using sensors in a spiral conveyor application is
100 per cent guaranteed to perform exactly as the
challenging. The traditional approach involves a
original device.
maintenance engineer visiting the site to conduct
The company points out that product qualification repairs and upgrades. During these visits the
of a duplicated device is significantly less than any engineer will also check tension using a load cell that
redesigned or emulated alternative. clips onto the surface of the belt and measures the
force between the modular links.
Patented SuperCounter Processing This approach, however, is limited as these checks
are only done periodically as part of a scheduled
The standard counters on most DAQ systems can
maintenance programme also necessitates
only sample an encoder, RPM or other angle-based
stopping the conveyor. In addition, the load cell that
sensor in alignment with the analogue sample rate.
measures tension only works on some parts of the
Unfortunately, these outputs are typically much
conveyor system and is unable to fit through tight
faster than analogue sensors and a sample rate of
spaces, so providing only a limited picture of tension
up to 100 MHz is needed - a rate much higher than
throughout the whole system.
nearly all data acquisition systems can meet. The
best they can achieve is to detect the counter value To address some of these difficulties, Mantracourt
and then align it with the next analogue sample. As developed a novel system based on its T24
a result, this data is not recorded precisely on the technology. This incorporated an innovative antenna
time axis, which is a problem in applications such as system that uses 2.4 GHz radio and a proprietary
rotational or torsional vibration, where a phase shift protocol with the language written by Mantracourt.
of even one sample can affect the results.
A key advantage of the protocol is that it allows the
In order to address this Instrumentation Live exhibitor monitoring of multiple transmissions between the
Dewesoft UK Limited has patented SuperCounter sensors and the base station. With this Habasit was
technology within their DewesoftX software. This able to monitor one-to-one, one-to-many, many-
samples at 102.4 MHz irrespective of the setting to-one, and many-to-many devices. Ultimately this
of the analogue sample. The software calculates allows a single operator to use one device to monitor
floating-point counter values and aligns them a single link, or multiple operators to use multiple
precisely in time with the analogue data, such that devices to monitor multiple links.
the SuperCounter effectively serves as two counters
The final system was embedded into the spiral
in one with one acting as the master and the other
food belt to monitor belt tension on an ongoing
as a ‘sub-counter’.
basis. It allows users to perform 24/7 diagnostics
The counter/encoder output is fed in parallel into using Mantracourt’s SensorSpace cloud-based
both counters and the sub-counter measures monitoring platform, implementing a preventative
the exact time of the rising edge of the signal, thus maintenance programme that reduces any
calculating and perfectly aligning the real value of unplanned downtime and minimises ongoing
the counter with respect to the analogue values. maintenance costs.

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