The company idea was to increase the production effectiveness and efficiency reducing the downtimes. They approached MonoDAQ to find a solution able to help them assess the state of the machine and to predict maintenance cycles well avoiding unnecessary downtime or even worse avoiding unplanned shutdowns.

In order to be able to help we first:

• Studied the machine composition and its elements in detail
• Conducted an interview with the machine designers
• Conducted a thorough interview with customer maintenance engineers in order to understand the issues they where facing so far in details

Thereafter we assessed the most critical points of the machine we started performing the measurements on. These where:

• main shaft bearings
• main gearbox,
• main shaft,
• cutting and grinding bearings 

The client factory had a standard maintenance plan for the GRP production line but we noticed that it didn't consider the different pipes diameters produced in the CFW machine.  Therefore there was a necessity to assess the current state of the GRP condition and to put in place a maintenance plan. The company personnel was trained by MonoDAQ in order to get the sufficient understanding of GRP vibrations, its impacts on operation and to be able to set alarm values as well as KPI's.

In the second step we permanently installed the MonoDAQ accelerometers and temperature sensors on all the critical machine elements as well as set vibration and temperature tresholds and alarm values together with company persnonel.

DEWESoft data acquisition software and MonoDAQ EtherCAT measurement hardware were selected because of necessity to perform distributed and at the same time synchronised measurements.

After months of conducting measurements we figured out that for some diameters the maintenance was not enough. In the past some CFW machine problems were derived as a consequence of improper/insufficient bearing lubrication resulting in an increased temperature and later in a higher vibration levels. Temperature sensors combined with acceleremoters were the optimal solution to monitor and predict failures in future.

The continuous filament winding plant includes the following machinery and equipment:

• Continuous Filament Winding machine 400-4000
• Hydrostatic Testing Machine for pipes
• Hydrostatic Testing Machine on sleeves
• Sleeve Grooving Machine to make the sleeves
• Pipe & Sleeve Joining Machine

The manufacturing of continuous pipe is carried out on a mandrel assembled with discs, aluminum beams and steel band, sized according to the pipe diameter required. The steel band moves in the axial direction, sliding over the ball bearings inserted in aluminum beam grooves. At the end of the mandrel, an exit head guides the steel band back into the mandrel inner pipe, which supports the exit head. On the opposite end of the mandrel near the cam plate, the steel band is wound on the mandrel again, forming a smooth surface with simultaneous rotation and advancing in the axial direction. The glass fiber laminate is applied onto the moving mandrel according to the following procedure: firstly, a release film, e.g. polyester film, is wound on the mandrel, followed by a surface veil (“C” glass or synthetic), both of them supported by proper winders. Glass roving, together with chopped glass, sand aggregate and polyester resin, is applied simultaneously in the correct position, according to design specifications. Finally, a layer of surfacing veil is applied. The resin feeding on the continuous winding machine consists in feeding the resin and catalyst from respective resin daily mixers and the catalyst storage tank by dedicated pumps and via separate piping to the continuous winding machine dozing station. The resin and catalyst mixing are pumped on the winding machine shortly before feeding the mix on to the pipe/sleeve under production. The mixing operation is carried out with static mixers. After the pipe has cured, it is automatically cut and calibrated on-line and the pipe length is selected by the operator.