The Oven Management System
Microaccurate Oven Management System (OMS) is a complete solution for managing ovens in most manufacturing environment. OMS design is aimed at: 1) Replacing the traditional round chart temperature recorder. 2) Real time and up to 9 points temperature profiling. 3) Manage and monitor temperature data automatically. 4) Ensure materials in the oven baked correctly. 5) Prevent wrong materials being loaded and baked. 6) Track oven events on real time basis and 7) Manage all data on a user friendly website.
Therefore reducing the cost of managing the oven and improving the yield and quality of the material processed is expected from the system. OMS is capable of monitoring temperature up to 200 ovens per driver, 9 points per oven, assist material tracking, report events or even perform certain control or validation if right configuration is performed. The complete system consists of the Interface Controller Box, host driver, MySQL database and web application. Real time temperature readings collected at the interface through J or K type thermocouple wires could be logged in the MySQL database.
Temperature Data Logger
Microaccurate OMS has a built in Temperature Data Logger. This multi-channels temperature data logger is built for ovens that requires up to 9 points temperature monitoring (4 upper, 4 lower and one center). Temperature at each point is measured every 30 seconds and the readings are sent to a remote server on real time basis. Temperature range from -99.9 °C to 999.9 °C on either J or K-type of thermocouple wires could be measured with resolution of 0.1 °C. For ovens that do not require 9 points temperature the unused channel's terminals can be left open. Data collected at the server are screened for changes that are more than the set value, by 0.5 °C for example, and will be sent to the database for storage. This is particularly useful for oven that has long bake time as the temperature would normally stay flat after reaching its target. Keeping the flat data would bring no benefit other than eating up database storage. Setting the delta value to 0 will force the server to send all data to the database.
Most temperature data loggers are built as hand held standalone systems, data collected are manually transferred to a computer. This is because real time data logging poses many challenges such as network interruption, power supply interference, circuit grounding issue and auto connection reliability issue etc. The Microaccurate OMS was built to address these issue effectively with total transparency to the users.
Temperature Profiling
Temperature profiling enables engineer to identify hot and cold spots in the oven. By making use of the profile engineer could optimize the process, eliminate defects, increase throughput, optimize the oven usage and adherence to customers’ specifications etc.
Conventional temperature profiling is normally done on dummy samples. However, Microaccurate OMS provides user the temperature profiles on every piece of material that has been baked in the oven. It is operator-less if thermocouple wires are attached to the oven permanently. As temperature data logging is done continuously in real time basis and the material tracking system registers every piece of material entering the oven, therefore the profile has information of date time, material id and temperature graph of each point in the oven. Software for temperature charting has web UI, user could access the information from any computer connected to the intranet.
Material Tracking
Ensuring oven operating at right temperature does not guarantee that all materials will be baked with right duration, it is necessary to register the materials id that has entered the oven. Microaccurate OMS has a barcode scanner for operator to scan the material id, the system will timestamp the event before sending to the database. It is therefore possible to know exactly what temperature profile a particular material has been treated with.
Events Reporting
Flawless baking depends not only on the right temperature profile but also other inputs such as dry air or even N2 gas in the oven, for example. Microaccurate OMS provides reporting of real time events such as N2 gas on/off, exhaust on/off, door open/closed etc. Occurrences of these events will be captured and timestamped before sending to the database.
Process Control
Maintaining temperature within upper and lower control limit at every point in the oven is not an easy task. Most ovens normally come with over temperature protection; that is when oven's temperature goes beyond upper control limit it triggers a power cut to the heater. However there may be cold spot that goes below control limit. Cold spots are normally seen at area where air flow is being blocked by the placement of materials. Microaccurate OMS is able to alert operator when temperature dip below the control limit. It could also put the material on hold for engineer's disposition, or even extend the bake time in order to compensate for the lost time.
Abnormality Alert
In needs of immediate attention, Microaccurate OMS has a LED flash light and an audible alarm to inform user whenever attention is needed. For example, when the temperature dips below control limit, or when user trying to register a material that is not supposed to be for the oven, alarm could be turned on.
In case of emergency abnormality such as over temperature alert can be configured to inform user through email, SMS or Whatsapp on the user's mobile phone.