Fortress Stealth Metal Detector-Could noise from other machines cause to malfunction

[Cydog]

Good Morning ,


We have a new Fortress Stealth Metal Detector. About 30' away
we have a machine with motors and solenoids on it , Whenever this
machine runs ,it seems like it causes the Fortress to increase in it's sensitivity , and cause false rejects and alarms .


Have any of you seen this happen with any Fortress Stealth
Metal Detectors . If so what did you do about it ? Also , the Fortress has it's own 3 Phase 480 vac motor and Powerflex Drive , and they never effects it . Everything is well grounded .


Fortress is blaming the environment. This is one of the most softest power environments I have seen in manufacturing
Any Thoughts. Thanks so much , and have a great week.

 

[Nova5]

Seen it with Safelines in food production facilities. So I could easily believe that Fortress is affected. The motor had to be moved.

You could try making a faraday cage to block out the RF noise from the other line. You need full enclosure, just more like a shielding wall

Im sure Fortress designed their system to minimize noise and trained the metal detector to ignore the remaining noise generated by the system.

 

[OkiePC]

I too have seen this with Safeline.

Once had a system that was triggered to reject because a platform frame was rubbing against another machinery frame near the detector.

If you were standing on the platform studying the Safeline, the rubbing would stop and the thing would not act up. After you walked away, no weight on the platform would allow normal machine vibration to cause the metal to metal vibration to occur.

That company seemed averse to floor anchors, but we did get them to okay some redheads in the floor after proving how expensive it was to let this particular platform move around freely.

 

[Bit_Bucket_07]

Good Morning ,


We have a new Fortress Stealth Metal Detector. About 30' away
we have a machine with motors and solenoids on it , Whenever this
machine runs ,it seems like it causes the Fortress to increase in it's sensitivity , and cause false rejects and alarms .


Have any of you seen this happen with any Fortress Stealth
Metal Detectors . If so what did you do about it ? Also , the Fortress has it's own 3 Phase 480 vac motor and Powerflex Drive , and they never effects it . Everything is well grounded .


Fortress is blaming the environment. This is one of the most softest power environments I have seen in manufacturing
Any Thoughts. Thanks so much , and have a great week.

I have encountered a situation in which a metal detector would trip whenever the speed of a motor (on a different but adjacent conveyor) operated by a VFD changed. We wound up having to relocated the metal detector further away from the motor in order to stop the nuisance trips.

 

[Nova5]

Make that "you don't need" in my previous post. I can't edit it at this point

 

[James Mcquade]

you might consider the following.
just mentioning ideas.

1. calibrate the metal detector with the system that is 30 ft away running at full capacity. allow the detector to warm up for 15 minutes first.
2. a constant voltage transformer rated more than the requirements.
3. making sure that the power to the unit is not the same panel as the machine 30 ft away. if it is the same and cannot be avoided, put an isolation transformer next to the power panel for the metal detector and also use the constant voltage transformer.
4. use line reactors for the machine 30 ft away.
james

 

[SeanT]

A couple of times on one of our Fortress units, it started acting up just sitting idle without product running past it. The detector information screen for one of the heads showed the reference value bouncing all over the place, sometimes looking like it was dropping out completely. I opened the back cover of the detector head and pushed on the I/O connector to make sure it was fully engaged, and all of the noise disappeared. I think it's worth a quick check before you start troubleshooting noise from external sources.

 

[sharkyh2o]

Check the manual to see if you can operate at a different frequency. We use Bunting and it is a dip switch setting.

 

[Nova5]

Safelines with the 7"ish display have a really neat feature in that you can have them display the detection field, and what points its seeing go through it, you can then manipulate the field's size and rotation to make it accept ambient. This feature is only a "demo" that operates for an hour but does actually change the settings. The next funny bit.. it will reset its 1hr timer anytime you exit that feature.

Making buying that feature pointless ( wonder if some wise programmer thought the same...)