Month: March 2022

Best service from a remote location, at any time, from virtually any place – that is the idea of our tool „digital Expert on Demand“, in short dEoD. This enables us at ABP to provide our customers with the very best possible remote troubleshooting support for their systems. This saves time and travel expenses – if successful, your system will be up and running again much faster, thus reducing downtime.

Prerequisites:
The first step in successfully assisting you with troubleshooting is to establish some basic prerequisites.

Safety

An ABP inverter system is a high-power system with voltages of up to 3000V. To work safely here, it is essential to become familiar with the specific safety aspects of working on a inverter system. For this purpose, ABP offers an online training as part of a dEoD contract, in which the risks and danger points as well as the safe working are covered in detail. This training is explicitly aimed at qualified electricians, as only they are allowed to work on the inverter. Furthermore, ABP also offers an optional basic package that deals with the necessary protective equipment.

Measuring tool

An appropriate measuring tool is essential for successful troubleshooting. This consists, among other things, of a multimeter that provides measurement capabilities for resistance, voltage (AC/DC), diode test and capacitance measurement.

An oscilloscope is also often necessary because faults in the inverter often occur dynamically, e.g. the breakdown of a component under voltage. The evaluation of such measurement images requires very good knowledge and experience with the inverter technology. This is why we would like to support you in the best possible way.

We work with a network-compatible soft oscilloscope that can be integrated via the Siemens router. Desired effect: The measurement images are directly available to the ABP service engineer. The required settings of the oscilloscope can be set remotely by the ABP service engineer.

To achieve the greatest possible continuity in this respect, we keep this measuring tool standardized. This allows us to ensure that the respective ABP expert does not first have to deal with the oscilloscope itself, which can cost valuable time in the event of system downtime. We have compiled the following measuring equipment, which has also proven itself under practical conditions:

• Soft oscilloscope, incl. 4 10:1 probes
• Current clamp 3000A
• High-voltage probe, 3kV
• Current clamp 20 A

Remote connection

ABP makes use of the proven and secure solution from Siemens to establish the connection. This establishes a secure VPN connection to your furnace system, which allows access to the PLC, the PRODAPT® and the DICU 3. This means that any program changes can be made
online, and the fault memory can also be read out. Test functions, which are often important for troubleshooting, can also be performed this way.

Please note: Access to older inverter electronics such as the DICU 2, which were still equipped with serial interfaces, is not possible here. However, ABP offers a quick and easy conversion to DICU 3 – please contact us for further information.

Data glasses

Data glasses can be used to send the images you see directly to the supporting service engineer so that they can guide you during the measurements. The advantage: You have both hands free to work! This in turn means that the service engineer can give you clear instructions. Alternatively, the image data can also be transmitted via smartphone.

To take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by data glasses or smartphones, we recommend setting up a sufficiently fast WLAN network in the area of the furnace system, especially in the inverter room.

The ABP VIRTUAL TRAINING is an important part of the ABP VIRTUAL ACADEMY. This is where important actions, work steps and emergency measures can be planned – from any location and at any time, on a virtual twin of a system. Modules such as the „Bridging“ module can be used to train scenarios that would ideally not occur in real life – but which cannot be easily trained in real-life situations either. This makes it possible to virtually stage real conditions that would not be possible to create on the actual object for safety reasons. The virtual training courses are also a tool for training new employees. ABP‘s virtual training modules can be easily completed as a desktop application like a computer game or interactively in the room using special equipment.

The virtual training modules are developed by ABP‘s digitalization experts and are based on years of experience in the field, as well as on feedback from various ABP customers. As such, special training modules can also be developed for irregular maintenance and malfunctions that occur only infrequently. Individual scenarios just for the production environment of a single customer can also be developed.
There are numerous advantages to virtual training. Because of the abstraction factor, there is never any danger for man or machine, and at the same time, working on the system is extremely realistic because of the interaction it provides. On the other hand, the virtual trainings are particularly efficient.
Production operations are not restricted, there is no need for cost-intensive melting, and time can be saved thanks to the accelerated simulation. Since training can be conducted at any time in basically any location, you also save on travel expenses and unproductive employee time as a result of traveling.

ABP Virtual Training: With the „Bridging“ module, foundry employees can practice on a digital twin

A very striking example is the training to prevent bridging in the induction furnace of our foundry customers. When melting in the induction furnace, the charge material can form a solid blanket above the active coil because the electromagnetic field no longer couples there. This can interfere with the actual melting process by causing this part to get stuck and prevent the scrap from sliding into the active part of the coil. The potential consequence: This results in severe overheating of the melt in the lower crucible section, which loses contact with the scrap suspended above it. This overheating can attack and damage the furnace lining. Failure to detect this in time can result in furnace blowout or explosion due to overheating. All in all, this is a process that can have a massive impact on safety and operation and must be avoided at all costs.
This is where training comes in: ABP Induction has developed a virtual training module specifically for the bridging phenomenon. It allows the scenario described to be simulated and then trained – on the digital twin of the system and thus not in a direct production environment, but in a highly practical manner while taking all safety-relevant aspects into account. The employee trains all work steps virtually and is also able to experience hazardous situations in this special training that are impossible to train in the physical environment – and, in the best case scenario, should not ever occur at all.