Background: A London-based manufacturing company utilises multiple force test machines for production quality control. The force test machines compress the products and display the reaction force for the operator to make a Pass or Fail decision.

While the equipment still functions as intended during its design, it is incompatible with current Quality Standards and customer requirements for product data sets. The force testing process now requires collecting the force of each product along with the product batch number (from a barcode), the temperature of the product during testing and timestamp.  

EdgeBX pilot implementation

Two EdgeBX-S units were configured with a temperature sensor, a position switch and an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC) to read the existing load cell display ±10V output of two force testing machines.

When the test machines operate, the position switch is triggered when at “measurement position” to collect the load cell and temperature sensor readings, process the readings (averaging, translate voltage to force) and send the timestamped dataset to a EdgeBX-R unit over an independent network.

The EdgeBX-R unit collates the data received from the EdgeBX-S units and sends them to a PC for storage through a wired connection.

After a successful trial period, IoMech developed a user interface in liaison with the machine operators and the production managers.

An EdgeBX-SUI unit was configured with a barcode scanner and a 3.5” colour display in addition to the ADC, position and temperature sensor to meet the requirements gathered.

The prototype unit shown below demonstrated the unit’s ability to collect and send all sensor data but also to control the machine over different testing modes.

With the user interface signed-off from the customer, IoMech is now developing the final 7” display EdgeBX-SUI units and a LabView-based data aggregation software for processing the data received by the EdgeBX-R unit. 

The complete system will be trialled and finalised before delivery.