Vibration levels are the earliest indication of wear in bearings and gears. Monitran has added Modbus, the industry standard protocol, to its g-mac module. The protocol enables the signal conditioning module to communicate vibration levels to computers and other networked devices for machine protection and process monitoring. The module is in a standard DIN format for rail mounting and can accept any standard two-wire accelerometer. In addition to the Modbus interface, there are three analogue outputs: acceleration (proportional to 4 to 20mA or 0 to 10V DC); an ISO 10816-3 overall root mean squared (RMS) velocity signal (also proportional to 4 to 20mA or 0 to 10V DC); and the raw AC generated by the accelerometer. Vibration and displacement modules can be used to monitor motors, engines and drive trains.
