The Challenge
A major European truck manufacturer has a tilt rig cell used for testing the pitch and roll behavior of an engine. The system was originally installed by an A&D partner, and includes ADAPT data acquisition software on the RedLine crate. As the only tilt rig in the facility, the cell was highly utilized. Although the equipment was all in good working order, some of the aging hardware included some components that were becoming obsolete. The customer was concerned that if any of these parts actually failed it would be impossible to replace them. Brand new hardware could be quite costly, and the resulting downtime while it was sourced and installed would be significant. The decision was made to be proactive, and upgrade the equipment before a failure occurred. However, the potential testing time lost during the process was still a major concern.
The A&D Solution
A&D’s iConnect ReNew offered a direct, low-cost replacement for the existing hardware, including new I/O based on iConnect, and the latest version of ADAPT software. This solution provided a new, more reliable system without causing any variation in the functionality of the cell. The entire process, start to finish, took only three days. The physical hardware upgrade was completed on the first day, including the replacement of the RedLine crate with the ReNew system, and the reconnecting of the wiring. On the second day the existing tests were converted to ADAPT 5.0. Verification and commissioning were completed on the third day.
In addition to minimizing the downtime, the installation of the iConnect ReNew system provided a seamless transition to a new, more reliable solution without any changes to the day-to-day operation of the test cell. Because the ADAPT 5.0 software was compatible with the existing tests, the upgrade was totally transparent to the tilt rig operators, and therefore no retraining was required
A direct result of A&D’s commitment to long-term customer support, iConnect ReNew provides an ideal solution for those customers who, for a variety of reasons, wish to upgrade their existing test cells, but cannot afford the significant downtime or the high cost of a brand new system.
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