Software drives vibration analyser to new ground

The portable ZonicBook/618E is a novel full-featured vibration analyser.

The portable ZonicBook/618E is a novel full-featured vibration analyser.

Vibration analysis and monitoring has never been easier than with the new ZonicBook/618E with the eZ-series of analysis and monitoring software.

The ZonicBook leverages 20-plus years experience of providing vibration measurement solutions, and this compact Ethernet-based solution adds another dimension - the lowest cost full-featured 8- to 56-channel analyser available from anyone.

As software in the PC determines all the ZonicBook's capabilities, it is easy to upgrade a system and add more capabilities over time.

The ZonicBook hardware is the signal conditioning and acquisition engine, and the software in the PC defines the specific analysis and monitoring features of the system.

Five software packages are available with the ZonicBook.

Each is tailored to a particular vibration measurement and analysis application.

Users can choose the package that suits a particular application and then upgrade to additional packages as requirements evolve.

eZ-Analyst provides real-time multichannel vibration analysis, including features such as overlay of previously acquired data while acquiring new data, strip charts of the throughput data files, crosschannel analysis, and direct export to the most popular Modal analysis packages, ME Scope and Star Modal.

eZ-Tomas provides online vibration recording of rotating machinery, with limit checking, storage, and analysis of acquired data.

Order tracking, waterfall, orbit, polar, bode, spectrum and trend displays show machine startup and shutdown events, as well as diagnose long-term changes in machine health.

eZ-Balance is used to balance rotating machinery with up to seven planes.

A balance toolkit, including split weight calculations, supports the balance process.

The balance vectors are displayed on a polar plot so the user has a visual indication of the improvement.

Time and spectrum plots show detailed vibration measurement during the balance process.

eZ-Rotate provides in-depth post-acquisition analysis of measurements made by the ZonicBook on rotating machinery.

Special emphasis is on order normalisation and order tracking by resampling the time domain data acquired from eZ-Analyst.

eZ-Rotate displays order tracked waterfall, Bode plots of phase and magnitude, order tracks of amplitude against rotational speed and colour speed spectrum maps.

The eZ-NDT package is exclusively used in production applications to determine the quality of composite-metal at production rates of 1 part per second.

The heart of the ZonicBook is a high-speed Ethernet engine powered by a PowerPC processor, enabling all acquired data to be transferred to the PC in real time at better than 2Mbyte/s.

This means that every acquired data point can reside on the PC's hard drive, making recreation and post acquisition analysis of acquired data as precise as possible.

Other analysers simply store frequency-domain information, which makes playback less precise than the original real-time measurement.

Instead, ZonicBook transmits all time-domain measurements, which means there's no data loss when analysing acquired waveforms.

As the data are already on the PC's hard drive, there's no time lost transferring data, as with other analysers.

The eight built-in dynamic inputs to the ZonicBook are software programmable for voltage range (nine ranges), AC/DC coupling, ICP source, and are capable of reading sensor calibration information using transducer electronic datasheets.

When ICP sensors are attached, AC coupling with 4mA bias current is selected via software.

AC coupling without bias is also possible for measuring any AC waveform from 25mV to 5V full scale.

DC coupling is also software selectable, with full-scale ranges from 25mV to 25V.

DC coupling is useful when attaching proximity sensors.

Front-panel indicators for every channel illuminate when an open ICP sensor is detected, or when an overrange condition occurs.

The indicators are latched when the fault condition occurs so that the operator is aware of the condition, and are reset when a new acquisition is initiated.

Up to 56 channels of dynamic signal inputs can be measured with the ZonicBook, by adding eight-channel WBK18 expansion options.

Each option provides the same capability as the built-in dynamic signal channels.

The ZonicBook has four separate inputs for measuring tachometers.

To accommodate a wide variety of tachos, each input is programmable for input range up to +/-75V.

Tacho inputs have programmable AC/DC coupling, lowpass filtering, threshold level, debounce, and counter mode.

Tacho waveforms can be captured in real-time just like any other analogue input, allowing real-time troubleshooting of tachometers.

Tacho inputs are used by eZ-Analyst and eZ-Tomas software to determine relationships between frequency domain input channels to a known input frequency source.

The eight-channel ZonicBook/618E including one eZ-Series software package is $13,999.

Each additional eight-channel option is $4899.

Availability is 3 weeks ARO.

Back to top