Industrial temperature sensor technology enables targeted, highly accurate ongoing monitoring of equipment and component temperatures with real-time communication to facilitate immediate response to potential problems. Temperature sensors are built to measure heat output at specific areas that act as indicators of potential malfunction, including friction points, rotational axes and other critical processes.
Industrial wireless temperature sensor systems use high-speed network communication to allow for real-time, constant machine health monitoring and predictive maintenance for a proactive approach, addressing issues before they lead to unplanned downtime or premature equipment damage. With industrial temperature monitoring, maintenance teams have access to more data, earlier in the process, and are thus able to detect issues, assess problems and remedies, and act in a timely and effective manner.
Understanding the types of temperature sensors
Temperature sensor systems can consist of various technologies, each with its own unique set of benefits and ideal use cases. These include:
- Thermcouples: These are used throughout many industrial environments because they offer durability and can detect a broad range of temperatures. They’re especially suited for use in high-temperature environments such as kilns or furnaces, offering less accuracy than other types but faster response times.
- Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTDs): With their high accuracy and stability over time, RTDs are perfect for use in applications that require precision. Some of the most common applications for these are monitoring temperature in motor windings, compressors and controlled environments.
- Thermistors: These offer a much higher sensitivity to small temperature changes than other sensors, but they are limited to narrower ranges. They’re used frequently in HVAC systems and smaller machinery that is not subject to large changes in temperature.
- Infrared Sensors: Using infrared light to measure surface temperatures, these are a good choice for non-contact applications such as fast-moving production lines. They’re also useful for monitoring difficult-to-reach or rotating components, helping to improve worker safety.
- Semiconductor Sensors: These are compact and more affordable than other options and can be found in many digital systems for built-in diagnostics capabilities. However, they are limited by their lower temperature range.
How do temperature monitoring sensors work?
Sensors use a variety of techniques to detect changes in temperature. By measuring properties that change with fluctuations in heat, this equipment provides accurate measurements of temperature changes. Sensors can detect these changes either by being in contact with the material or detecting energy emitted by the equipment.
Contact Sensors:
- RTDs measure the predictable increase in electrical resistance of metals related to temperature changes.
- Thermocouples generate a voltage signal based on the thermoelectric effect between two dissimilar metals.
- Thermistors will change their resistance significantly with a rise in temperature
Non-Contact Sensors:
- Infrared sensors detect the infrared energy from a surface and convert it into a temperature reading
No matter the technology employed, the data from these sensors is often amplified and digitized so it can be transmitted to monitoring systems such as CMMS, IIoT platforms or PLCs. These provide operators and maintenance teams with automated alerts when thresholds are exceeded. In some cases, these systems may trigger automatic shutdowns when excessive temperatures are detected.
Where are industrial temperature sensors used?
An industrial temperature monitoring system can be useful on any type of equipment with moving parts and components. Examples include:
- Motors
- Pumps
- Compressors
- Fans
- Blowers
- Bearings
- Gearboxes
Potential issues that machine temperature monitoring sensor technology can detect — which can be an underlying sign of out-of-spec operation and potential equipment damage or shutdown later — include:
- Lack of lubrication
- Over-lubrication
- Increased equipment friction
- Improper equipment calibration
- Reduced air flow
- And more
Predictive maintenance with temperature data and monitoring
Predict and prevent machine failures
Increased temperature at specifically selected points on equipment is a highly reliable indicator of an underlying performance problem that will eventually lead to equipment shutdown, downtime and potential damage.
As equipment performance falls out of defined acceptable range, heat can be generated (in the case of increased friction or improper lubrication) or will build up (in the case of insufficient airflow) — two scenarios that can be quickly identified and alerted by way of temperature sensors and communication systems. By investigating increased temperatures as soon as they occur, maintenance technicians can identify and diagnose a problem well before it becomes severe enough to shut down the machine or cause equipment failure.
Prevent unplanned downtime
With temperature data and real-time alerts, maintenance technicians gain the flexibility to address a problem at a more convenient time while preventing equipment failure. Using diagnostics and production data, personnel can identify a maintenance window with a minimal impact on production, thus reducing or eliminating unplanned downtime and enabling operations to plan around the work. Connecting these sensor systems to CMMS or IIoT platforms provides teams with up-to-the-minute details about machine health so they can make the most informed decisions about maintenance tasks.
Industries served
Flexible technology for multiple industries
We focus on eight core areas of manufacturing while maintaining the flexibility to adapt and provide for nearly any industry, drawing on our decades of experience in industrial maintenance technology.
Benefits of industrial temperature sensor systems
Among the many advantages implementing remote temperature monitoring can bring to manufacturers include:
- Reducing unplanned downtime
- Extending equipment lifespan
- Improving safety and environmental compliance
- Achieving higher ROI through fewer failures and reduced repair costs
- Enhancing predictive maintenance planning
Integrating temperature sensors with broader condition monitoring
By combining temperature sensor systems with other monitoring tools, manufacturers and their maintenance teams can gain full insights into how well their assets are performing and holding up to heavy use. Using these in conjunction with vibration, pressure and current sensors with data aggregation through CMMS or IIoT platforms means more-accurate diagnostics, better predictive modeling and holistic equipment health insights.
Partnering with ATS for machine health monitoring
At ATS, we are ready to work with you as a maintenance technology strategist and partner, providing solutions that we have carefully tailored to provide the maximum benefit and the minimum disruption to your operations during installation and implementation. Our machine health monitoring solutions provides 24/7 monitoring of your equipment through wireless sensors and analysis of sensor data from our team of reliability engineers. If potential failures are detected, our team sends recommendations to the onsite maintenance team with corrective actions.
These facets of our predictive maintenance service offering maximize your benefits, including improved uptime, increased equipment reliability, longer equipment life and a more immediate return on your investment.
Are you looking for a data-driven maintenance program that gives you the insight and analytics to be proactive against downtime?
ATS can help! Contact us.
