IMI Sensors Announces Enhanced Echo® Wireless Vibration Monitoring System

New Modbus® Interface Increases Compatibility

September 19, 2012 - DEPEW, NY - IMI-Sensors, a division of PCB Piezotronics, Inc., and the world's largest manufacturer of industrial vibration monitoring instrumentation, announces the debut of the Echo® Wireless Vibration Monitoring System. Designed to monitor the overall health of critical machinery and provide immediate notification when warning or critical levels are reached, the Echo® Wireless System is a versatile tool. It can be applied to a wide range of industrial applications in the power, steel, food processing, paper, and chemical industries. The system is even more powerful now that it enables the integration of wirelessly transmitted data into existing legacy vibration systems and plant monitoring controllers. This is possible through a newly released Modbus® interface, which greatly enhances both the Echo® System and the user's existing vibration equipment.

One of the many benefits of the Echo® System is that it allows users to monitor the health of machinery more frequently and safely than a walk-around method, while helping to reduce downtime and inefficiency. Using the alarm panel included in the Echo® Monitoring Software, PdM professionals can see the status of all monitored points at a glance and focus valuable manpower on analyzing faulty machines rather than taking data on healthy ones.

A revolutionary technology in the world of Predictive Maintenance (PdM), the Echo® Wireless System utilizes both the Echo® Wireless Vibration Sensor and the EchoPlus® Wireless Junction Box to transmit vibration data to a single, central receiver. The sensor offers a true wireless solution for difficult installations, and the 8-channel wireless junction box is a very cost effective way for users to transmit vibration data from existing analog ICP® accelerometers over long distances. Both wireless options can be programmed to transmit data at a predetermined interval. Battery life of the sensor typically exceeds five years when transmitting data three times per day, and a 24 VDC source can power the EchoPlus® Wireless Junction Box without battery life limitations. EchoPlus® can also use a 6-13 VDC battery for remote applications or as a backup to 24 VDC power.

The Echo® Receiver is capable of accepting data from hundreds of sensors and relaying the data to a computer or server running the Echo® Monitoring Software. The software not only displays the transmitted vibration data (peak/rms velocity, acceleration, and crest factor), but it also allows PdM professionals to establish alarm values, plot and trend vibration data over time, generate reports, and receive email alerts.

The wireless technology of the Echo® Vibration Monitoring System allows for predictive maintenance programs to focus their valuable technical manpower on higher value tasks, such as fault analysis to diagnose unhealthy machinery, by supplementing the collection of route-based data on healthy machines. It also enables the collection of machine health monitoring data in hazardous areas, which eliminates the need to have personnel enter these dangerous places to collect routine measurements. The risk and cost of monitoring hard-to-access machines is greatly reduced when the Echo® System is introduced into a predictive maintenance program.

Modbus® is a registered trademarks of Schneider Electric and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.