Cloud-based Heat Treatment Warning System

Watchdogg is a cloud-based preventive maintenance warning system for your heat treatment furnaces.

The watchdog allows you to analyze your furnace status from anywhere in the world and at any time

The background

The idea of remote maintenance arose from the need to be informed in good time about possible moisture in the quenching oil in order to be able to avoid fires in hardening shops. While there are ways to monitor the quench oil, light signals or alarm sounds can be missed if employees are not in the immediate vicinity of the furnace. It is more effective to receive a text notification instead.

In search of usable methods, the “Internet of Things” did not offer satisfactory solutions for the heat treatment industry. So a separate system had to be developed. It quickly became clear that moisture in the oil is not the only reason for failures and that additional sensors would be helpful for our customers. The new goal was to develop a system that manages several sensors in parallel, stores and processes the data and informs our customers about alarm conditions via cell phone, tablet or PC. At the same time, the system should be reliable, inexpensive and easy to use.

These criteria are met with the Warchdogg .

Remote inquiry

• From up to 12 sensors
• 4-20mA. No/NC, or thermistors
• Integrated 24 VDC power supply
• NEMA 12 electrical box

The Watchdogg can significantly improve your maintenance process through remote monitoring for:

• Pressure
• Temperature
• Vibration
• Flow
• Relative humidity and other parameters

The only requirement is that the sensors process a 4 – 20 mA signal or a thermistor signal. The standard switch box comes with an integrated power supply that accepts twelve 24 V sensors. The signals are then transmitted from the watchdog to the cloud server.

web based​

• Connection via Ethernet or cell phone signal
• Custom sensors and alarms
• Unlimited number of signal receivers
• Unlimited data storage for each sensor
• Data export through .pdf or .csv

The Watchdog is a cloud-based system and should be connected to either an Ethernet connection or a cell phone network. After wiring and commissioning, the rest of the setup is completed online via the web browser. Once online, you can individually view, print out and/or save as a .pdf or .csv file the sensor configuration of the alarms, number of signal recipients, status of the sensors or sensor messages from the past as a curve diagram or alarm list.

Practical use

The sensors help to predict faults in good time before they lead to failure and thus to unscheduled emergency repairs. For this purpose, the sensors are set to an individual tolerance range. If the tolerance range is not reached or exceeded, you will receive a message on your mobile phone/tablet/PC.

Several ovens can be monitored in parallel and the following reporting options are conceivable:

• Fan blades running out of round
• Defective pumps
• Monitoring of the thermocouples
• Moisture monitoring in the quenching oil
• Pressure monitoring in endogas generators (catalyst saturated?)
• Temperature monitoring cooling systems
• Temperature monitoring of heating systems
• Performance monitoring (pressure changes)