Display trending: A tool for tracking down loss-in-weight feeding performance problems
While you try to identify what's behind a loss-in-weight feeding performance problem, your process can be sidetracked, resulting in unplanned downtime, reduced efficiency, and higher operating costs. This article explains how to use your loss-in-weight feeder's displays of feedrate, hopper net weight, feeder speed, and other parameters to "trend" feeding performance and track the process sources of performance problems.
As any veteran process troubleshooter knows, often the biggest challenge in diagnosing a performance problem is backtracking from the problem symptom to the cause. Sometimes this path is short and easy to follow, such as when a motor fails and needs to be replaced. But when the trail is long, indirect, or unclear, the potential causes quickly multiply, often branching into a seemingly endless array of dead ends.