Rotating machines

Balancing machine retrofit

New measurement electronics and software for Schenck, Hofmann and CEMB balancing machines. The frame, the bearings and the drive stay.

Get in touch All use cases
When a retrofit makes sense
The mechanics still hold, the electronics do not

A balancing machine often outlives its measurement electronics. The machine is still accurate, but one of these has failed or lost support:

Hardware
What the retrofit adds to the machine
Drive Machine bed Plane 1 Plane 2 Rotor Sensor Sensor Speed reference sensor cables analog samples mass, angle results Signal conditioning Data acquisition NI DAQmx or Dewesoft Industrial PC OpenEOL and pyPRB Operator screen PLC and MES Stays on the machine Added in the retrofit
The bed, the drive, the pedestals and the rotor tooling stay in place. The retrofit adds two sensors, a speed reference and the electronics that turn their signals into a correction.
The test
How a balancing run works
  1. Run the rotor up to balancing speed.
  2. Read the vibration in each correction plane against a once-per-revolution trigger.
  3. Compute the correction mass and angle in one or two planes from the influence coefficients.
  4. Check the result against the balance quality grade from ISO 21940-11.
  5. Store the result with the serial number of the rotor.
Software
The open-source software behind it
Your plantReceives the results
MES and quality databaseResults over OPC UA, MQTT or SQL
OpenEOLRuns the station
Task engine Open sourceRuns the balancing sequence step by step
Operator GUI Open sourceBrowser screen that shows the correction
Reports and database Open sourceOne record for each rotor
AnalysisComputes the correction
pyPRB Open sourceSingle-plane and two-plane influence coefficients
1X extraction Open sourceIQ demodulation, synchronous averaging, least squares or FFT
Tolerance checkBalance quality grade from ISO 21940-11
DriversTalk to the hardware
OpenEOL IO drivers Open sourceNI DAQmx, Dewesoft, Modbus, Siemens S7, Beckhoff ADS, OPC UA
Vendor runtimeNI-DAQmx from NI, when NI hardware is used
The parts marked open source are code your team can read and change. Vendor runtimes, such as NI-DAQmx, come from the hardware maker.
Related use cases
Other balancing work

Custom balancing machine for rigid rotors

A new machine built around your rotor, when there is no machine to keep.

Details

Flexible rotor balancing

Correction mode by mode for rotors that bend above their first critical speed.

Assembled machine balancing on force sensors

Unbalance measured under the feet of a running assembly, with no rotor to mount.

Details
We can help
Planning a retrofit?

Get in touch.

janko.slavic@fs.uni-lj.si
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