For thermal management devices

Elec­tron­ics spe­cial­ist Pfan­nen­berg has devel­oped com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabled ther­mal man­age­ment devices which allow intel­li­gent device mon­i­tor­ing for elec­tri­cal enclo­sures. The com­mu­ni­ca­tions-enabled cool­ing devices in the Cool X series can already be inte­grat­ed direct­ly into the automa­tion sys­tems of the users since 2015. The evo­lu­tion con­tin­ues: in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the lead­ing sen­sor man­u­fac­tur­er SICK, Pfan­nen­berg is now pre­sent­ing a new M2M com­mu­ni­ca­tion solu­tion, which can be used for mon­i­tor­ing and ser­vic­ing cool­ing devices remote­ly from any loca­tion made pos­si­ble by the SICK Meet­ing Point Router (MPR). All rel­e­vant sta­tus, diag­nos­tic and alarm con­di­tions can thus be made avail­able as phys­i­cal para­me­ters. Users ben­e­fit from appli­ca­tion-spe­cif­ic main­te­nance, cost-effi­cient ser­vice and increased machine avail­abil­i­ty thanks to pre­ven­tive maintenance.

Nils Halm, CTO Pfan­nen­berg Group, wel­comes the part­ner­ship with SICK: “The MPR allows remote main­te­nance of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabled cool­ing devices from any loca­tion. The con­nec­tion is via a Mod­bus RTU inter­face and a Mod­bus TCP/IP con­vert­er. Data from the SICK Remote Ser­vice Plat­form can be accessed direct­ly through a defined soft­ware inter­face pro­duced by our part­ner Cybus and then visu­al­ized. Secure trans­mis­sion of the data is paramount.”

MPR for secure communications
The MPR is based on an indus­tri­al PC with two Eth­er­net inter­faces which serves to phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rate the machine and cus­tomer net­works. An inte­grat­ed fire­wall enables com­mu­ni­ca­tions path­ways between the cus­tomer net­work and the machine net­work and between the machine net­work and the Inter­net only when they are actu­al­ly need­ed. Log book entries keep a record of all the access­es in the machine fold­er. It is user-friend­ly: the remote mon­i­tor­ing facil­i­ty can be acti­vat­ed and secure­ly ter­mi­nat­ed via a touch screen. 

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabled cool­ing devices allow pre­dic­tive maintenance
Pfannenberg’s Cool X‑Serie allows to access live and from any­where use­ful device para­me­ters. Users can mon­i­tor the cool­ing devices for their elec­tri­cal enclo­sures more effi­cient­ly, tak­ing a pre­dic­tive approach (pre­dic­tive main­te­nance) which results in improved machine and sys­tem avail­abil­i­ty. For exam­ple, a con­trol lamp shows when wear is becom­ing appar­ent which users can deal with in rou­tine or pre­dic­tive main­te­nance. Fur­ther­more, it sig­nals var­i­ous sta­tus­es and alarms, such as “device run­ning”, “door open” or “high tem­per­a­tures detect­ed exter­nal­ly or inter­nal­ly”. These sta­tus reports can be used to warn the oper­a­tor or can be inte­grat­ed in the auto­mat­ed con­trol units of mod­ern pro­duc­tion sys­tems. The analy­sis of ther­mal loads over a longer peri­od also allows main­te­nance inter­vals to be deter­mined exact­ly in line with the con­di­tions pre­vail­ing at the loca­tion where the device is used.

Fur­ther­more, tem­per­a­tures and speeds of indi­vid­ual com­po­nents, such as com­pres­sors or fans can be logged. The long-term analy­sis of this data can reveal, for exam­ple, that the device is con­tin­u­ous­ly run­ning at thresh­old lev­els and the amount of cool­ing cal­cu­lat­ed is pos­si­bly insuf­fi­cient. Users can respond in good time and pre­vent poten­tial machine downtime.

The com­mu­ni­ca­tions-enabled cool­ing devices in the Cool X series fea­ture con­trollers with mul­ti­mas­ter func­tions. They ensure that the tem­per­a­ture remains con­stant, even in large groups of elec­tri­cal enclo­sures, by oper­at­ing sev­er­al cool­ing devices simultaneously.

The cool­ing devices in the Cool X series are cut-out-com­pat­i­ble with Pfan­nen­berg’s air/air and air/water heat exchang­ers and with exist­ing devices in the same series. This means that users can eas­i­ly upgrade to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabled ver­sion with­out any mechan­i­cal intervention.