News

Finnish packaging producer one of the first to install Sulzer wireless condition monitoring

The Sulzer Sense condition monitoring system has been employed at Kotkamills, a producer of board, laminating paper and sawn products, from July 2019, ever since the first stages of the solution. The system monitors the condition of five process pumps and one medium-consistency (MC) pump in the pulp production line.

The system consists of one gateway designed for industrial conditions, located in the process area, and six sensors installed in the bearings of the monitored equipment. The devices are battery-powered and operate in a wireless mesh network.

Sulzer Sense measures vibration and temperature every 30 minutes. The gateway is connected to the Internet/Sulzer’s cloud service via a cellular connection. The monitored devices are within a radius of about 10 meters from each other. This allows for an excellent network and the use of a single gateway.

The commissioning of the condition monitoring system was said to be quick, easy and effortless and did not require special skills from the installer. The mobile app provided by Sulzer for the deployment of the system is unambiguous and easy to use.

The Sulzer Sense monitoring device measures machine vibrations and temperature to detect possible imbalance, misalignment, looseness, and bearing wear. It helps to identify changes in equipment condition parameters and indicates potential faults at an early stage, thus supporting predictive maintenance.

The cloud service provides the customer with easy access to device information. Through the cloud service, the customer can monitor the condition of the devices and view hardware trend information anywhere and anytime.

The service also offers access to detailed equipment information such as spare parts lists and product documentation. For maintenance and repair work, there is no need to look in the archive for instructions and drawings.

"The system has worked reliably, and the measurement results are in line with our own reference measurements," states Harri Carling, supervisor, condition monitoring and reliability at Kotkamills.

Related content