Responsibility for process technology and safety

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) ranks deficiencies in maintenance safety among the most common causes of accidents in plants. Above all where a number of people are working on one line, it is important to secure the area under maintenance against inadvertent intervention – for example, by means of seals – as the consequences for life and limb can be devastating.

“We hear about workplace accidents during maintenance all the time,”

explains Lisa Schmidt, Product Sales Manager for hygienic valve technology at GEA.

This is avoidable and can easily be prevented with a systematic LoTo approach. Since the solutions currently available were not convincing for GEA valves, the company decided to produce its own package of process technology and LoTo safety systems.

Says Schmidt:

“We consider it our responsibility to support our customers to the best of our ability when it comes to maintaining their duty of care toward their workforces.”

GEA’s customers – manufacturers in the food and pharmaceutical industries – operate complex plants with long lengths of piping where visibility is often an issue. If, for instance, machines are repaired during ongoing operation, it is important to specifically isolate these working areas from energy sources, i.e. sources of danger.

Schmidt reports:

“In our case, the danger lies in the media flowing through the pipelines. Specific valves or entire valve clusters can be secured using our LoTo solutions. One Canadian customer recently ordered 1,600 LoTo devices for all their plant’s butterfly valves, while other operators explicitly designate individual valves to eliminate specific potential hazards.”

Tailored LoTo devices for each valve

A GEA LoTo unit comprises a shut-off device that fixes the valve in the open or closed position and an optional lock that only authorized individuals can open. The type of fixing varies depending on the type of valve; they are available for all nominal diameters and actuator sizes and can easily be retrofitted:

• Butterfly valves can be shut off mechanically. The disk lock version uses a pin that is pushed into the valve stem and can also be used with an extension. This principle can similarly be applied to leakage butterfly valves.
• There are two ways of shutting off single-seat valves: Either the air supply can be shut off directly on the control top or actuator using the airlock principle, or the entire actuator can be locked via a disk lock which prevents the valve disks from moving. This is advisable where a higher level of safety is desired. In the event of a water hammer, the valve remains closed, ensuring an almost completely leak-proof system.
• GEA offers a bellow lock for VESTA valves in aseptic applications with manual actuators which is suitable for large and small nominal sizes.
• GEA LoTo solutions are generally designed for single-seat valves, but the main stroke in double-seat valves can also be locked. As VARIVENT and D-Tec valves with lift can still be actuated, the operator should consider using further safeguards here – for example, the air supply to the lifts.

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Aceinna announced the general availability of the OpenIMU335RI, a rugged inertial measurement unit (IMU) with CAN and RS232 interfaces. The OpenIMU335RI is the third product in Aceinna’s Gen 3 architecture and adds a rugged sealed standalone product to the earlier introduced IMU383ZA and OpenIMU330BI.

It delivers increased performance in key acceleration and gyro specifications. The OpenIMU335RI delivers best in class performance, including 1.3 degrees per hour bias instability (BI) and 0.1 degrees per root hour Angle Random Walk, making it ideal for 3DMG (3 Dimensional Machine Guidance), 3DMC (3 Dimensional Machine Control), and other applications requiring high-performance inertial measurements.

Aceinna’S OpenIMU335RI and all Aceinna’s Gen 3 products, are triple redundant – consisting of three independent 3-Axis Accelerometers and 3-Axis Gyros. The redundancy in Aceinna’s Gen 3 products provides increased performance in key acceleration and rate sensor characteristics and increased reliability and equipment uptime in the field. Aceinna has implemented a proprietary algorithm that detects a failing sensor and automatically and seamlessly eliminates it from the solution, allowing equipment to continue normal operation using the remaining sensors.

OpenIMU335RI is packaged in a rugged sealed housing with an Ampseal 16, 6 position connector. It includes CAN J1939 and RS232 interfaces for network connectivity. The miniature housing is formed using an over-molding process delivering a completely sealed solution that prevents any possible water ingress and is durable under tough environmental conditions. It is specified to work from an unregulated 9 V – 32 V supply and is fully qualified for use in 12 V and 24 V vehicle systems. A 3D magnetic field sensor is available as an option for applications requiring 9-DOF IMUs.

“This new IMU adds to Aceinna’s successful line of 6 and 9-DOF IMUs and provides even higher performance for designs that need it. It is the same size and has the same electrical interface as our popular OpenIMU300RI and MTLT305D sensors, giving the existing customer an upgrade path to higher performance without redesign,”

says Michael DiGangi, Executive VP of Aceinna.

The OpenIMU335RI uses a powerful ARM M4 CPU with a Floating Point Unit.  The OpenIMU335RI module runs the OpenIMU open-source stack that includes an optimized full-state Kalman Filter for Attitude and GPS-Aided Position-Velocity-Time (PVT) measurement. For developers, the open-source environment allows for algorithm optimization for a specific vehicle or application dynamics and custom messaging. A free development tool-chain based on Microsoft VS Code supports PC, MAC, and Ubuntu. Data logging and visualization are supported with Aceinna Navigation Studio, a free web-based graphical user interface.

The new OpenIMU335RI is available for purchase from Aceinna directly as well as from our network of worldwide distribution partners.

The post Aceinna Announces OpenIMU335RI, Next Generation High Performance Inertial Measurement Unit appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.