Energy chain with monitoring and predictive maintenance for RMG crane

Retrofitting intelligent sensors in outdoor cranes to increase the service life of the energy chain.

This rail-mounted gantry (RMG) uses two reverse assembled energy chains over a 113m travel due to the large number of cables. To increase the service life of both energy chain and crane, a safety system for switching off the cable guide in the event of damage and a preventive-maintenance system were retrofitted.

Profile

What was needed:
Energy chains with condition monitoring for push/pull force detection (iSense EC.P), monitoring of cables' tensile forces (iSense CF.P) and breakage detection (iSense EC.B) as well as a predictive-maintenance system

Requirements:
Safe and reliable movement of a large number of heavy cables in adverse environmental conditions

Industry:
Cranes

Success for the customer:
With smart plastics, the customer now has full control over the energy supply on the RMG crane, which is reliable and transparent.

RMG crane in a container terminal with steel beams and trolley.

Products used

igesense EC.B module with status LEDs and SD card slot.

Breakage detection for e-chains i.Sense EC.B

i.Sense Condition Monitoring module with connections and status indicators.

i.Sense EC.P push/pull force monitoring

igus isense CF.P module with status indicators and reset button.

Monitoring of cable tensile force i.Sense CF.P

igus energy chain from the 5050HDR series with straight links and metal end pieces.

Energy chain for long travels

The challenge

As with most machines, this crane is also designed for long and constant operating times. Even short and, above all, unplanned stops are undesirable and must be avoided.
However, the high number of cables in the two e-chains places a heavy load on the crane.
In addition to the desired long service life in conjunction with the high loads,a wide variety of weather conditions also come into play. The elements affect the material, but the function has to be 100% guaranteed at all times of the year because the cranes in port facilities have to deliver top performance.
The customer therefore wanted to install both a safety system that switches off in the event of damage (condition monitoring) and a preventive system (predictive maintenance), which issues a maintenance and replacement recommendation for the product in addition to a signal.

Solution

After detailed consultation, the customer opted for the complete smart plastics crane package and now has full control over a reliable and transparent energy supply on the RMG crane.
Specifically, the crane now contains three condition-monitoring systems:
i.Sense EC.P (push/pull force monitoring on e-chains®), i.SenseCF.P (pull force monitoring of cables) and i.Sense EC.B (breakage detection on e-chains).
In addition, a predictive-maintenance system has been installed.
All systems work well together and are supplied and installed as a package.

In the event of an incident with one of the energy chains (be it a bent guide trough, foreign objects in the guide trough, a blockage or a broken chain link), the condition-monitoring system informs the crane operator of the incident and, if required, the system can be stopped immediately.

Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, prevents all further incidents before they can occur. If maintenance is required, a signal with the relevant information is transmitted. All sensor data, e.g. temperature, acceleration or speed, is available online in real time or can be viewed in the company network via a dashboard.