Problem:
Pemamek (and customers) have the problem that automated welding systems make very inefficient use of energy, when there are gaps in the flow of production.
Ideas:
Walt Disney Method:
| Dreamer | Realist | Critic |
| Make the machines more efficient with some electrical components | we don’t have the plans and the expertise for that | We don’t have a mechanical engineer + the plans of the machines |
| Idle time in better use and maybe it could be more economical/ Reuse the excess heat | heat water with excess heat and transfer it to be processed | Do we have the materials for it? Does the company want us to do it? Do we have the expertise to do it? |
| Start stop automatic (don’t add a button to switch it off lul) | we need to write some code for it | What if it blocks the line because it switched off in the wrong moment, not worth it, How do we ensure it doesn’t turn on at the wrong moment? |
| the workers start and stop the machines manually | Worker cost to switch on and off is higher than the energy cost | Worker wage way too high for that, workers need to start the machines 10 minutes before they are using it |
| buy new machines | just buy them | energy cheap (10 cents per kwh) – machine expensive |
| Visualization of collected data | get the data of the machines and display with program (coding) (CRUD) | Will somebody look at it? |
| Automate the whole production process | not implementable | How? |
| hire a worker to watch over the process and turn the machines on and off | hire a worker | Would the company want to pay the worker? a machine idling 24h costs less than 2,40€ per day, how much does your worker get paid? |
| add a green leaf to the machine | doesn’t change anything | makes it heavier |
Prototype:
We decided to visualize the collected data from the machines so that the company/customers have an overview of their energy consumption and can make some changes in their production if they want.
Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)
To collect the data, we had to communicate with the machines. Therefore, we used a PLC of a Siemens SIMATIC S7-1200 for testing.
OPC UA
The machines are using the OPC UA protocol to communicate. It uses a OPC UA server and client. The Server is implemented on the machines, and we created an OPC UA client with a Python library.
Raspberry Pi
We aimed to create a solution that is as simple as possible and easy to maintain. Employing a Raspberry Pi accomplishes this objective, which is why we host all our applications on it.
Database
To make it possible to analyze the data, we had to store it somewhere. For that, we used the database MySQL.
Grafana
We utilized Grafana for generating graphs. It retrieves data from the database and utilizes it to create graphical representations.
