Engineering Safer Factories: A LabVIEW Approach

Many manufacturing companies have legacy test equipment still being utilized on their production floor. It makes perfect sense why they wouldn’t want to rush to replace this older equipment – as the adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Of course, there are drawbacks in continuing to employ decades-old test equipment, and the most common ones tend to be safety related.

Manual processes associated with older test equipment are not only detrimental to the operator from an ergonomic standpoint, but they can be very difficult to train new operators on as well. Older benches also lack modern safety protocols and fail in an unsafe condition. Multiple customers we’ve worked with in the hydraulics industry have complained that when a device under test (DUT) fails one of the steps of the end-of-line test, the bench will remain in the previous configuration rather than returning to a safe state. For example, if that the step required a drive to be spinning at 800 RPM or a hydraulic power unit to be pressurized at 5000 psi, the bench would hold at those settings upon test failure. A major safety incident like a pressurized oil release can occur if the operator does not remember to discharge the bench before removing the DUT for scrap or troubleshooting.

What manufacturers don’t often realize is that you can drastically improve the safety of a machine without buying a whole new one. By adding fail-safe programming to new, or existing, LabVIEW code, and relatively inexpensive controls hardware, factories can realize the benefits of improved operator safety for a fraction of the cost of a new machine. As an added benefit, these improvements nearly always lead to efficiency and throughput gains as well.

Some practical examples of how this is achieved include automating manual processes, adding sensors such as door latches or light curtains, and fail-safe LabVIEW programming. A common manual process that is easy to automate is adjusting valves. Replacing manually adjusted valves with electro-proportional valves increases operator safety and decreases variation from test to test by using PID control within LabVIEW to tune the valve to the required setting every time.

Light curtains can be very handy in test environments with moving parts that can cause injuries. LabVIEW can detect a sensor trigger from the light curtain (ie someone moving their hand to close to the test) and automatically stop the test and return the bench to a safe state.

If you have machines in your facility that you think can benefit from safety controls upgrades, reach out to the VoxSomnia team for a free discovery session to specifically identify your best-fit use cases!

About the author

Becca Tiwet

Sales & Applications Engineer

The extroverted engineer, Becca's background is in manufacturing design, where she worked on the front lines of common challenges of the manufacturing world for many years. Her ability to uncover the root cause of customer problems is a key ingredient to VoxSomnia's success!