A Life Meter for Enabling Condition Based Maintenance of Mission Critical Machinery

Impact Technologies proposes to capture actual operating time and life usage related parameters on selected mission critical machinery at Warner Robins, ALC in lieu of the traditional machine “powered time” in order to schedule condition-directed maintenance activities. In order to realize the maximum benefit at lowest cost, the proposed LifeMeter™ concept will produce specific outputs related the actual operational usage of the equipment and report associated maintenance actions to a higher level application layer. The proposed LifeMeter™ concept uses a secure wireless architecture that complies with current DoD IT security requirements and is capable of connecting to existing secure wireless networks in the facility. The core innovation of this Phase II program will be to develop and field this simple, low-cost integrated LifeMeter™ solution to enable automated capture of actual operating usage to the individual component level (e.g., spindle motor, axis drive motor, etc.) and integrate those readings using a secure wireless network to the facility maintenance management application (eFEM) to automatically generate work orders. BENEFIT: With the successful development and implementation of this proposed LifeMeter™ system, it is strongly anticipated that a technology transition path will be developed for full implementation on mission critical machinery systems at WR-ALC and potentially other DoD installations. In addition, based on the adaptable nature of the Life Meter system, the developments can be adapted for use on other assets used in variety of commercial or DoD applications such as manufacturing centers, ship building sites, assembly lines, etc.