Developing of Data Logging System for Flow Test Station in Industrial Laboratory

Abstract: CEJN is a leading transnational company with long history and professional background providing high-tech quick connect products in global market. The headquarters of the com-pany in Skövde, Sweden, is the birthplace and core location of the entire corporation. In the headquarters, the engineer tests their products at their flow test laboratory. In the laboratory, there are flow test stations for all product ranges. Within them, the most basic are flow test benches for air, water and hydraulic oil products. The flow test benches are aim to test the products under International/Swedish standard conditions to determine the performance. This project is aimed in upgrading the test benches by engineering both hardware and soft-ware, to achieve higher level of automation of the data logging system used in the lab. All three test benches were designed and installed following requirements in corresponding in-ternational standards. The principles of testing are similar, but they are not developed from the same era, and the automation level of each test bench differs. As a result, the need of up-grading in the benches is different. In the laboratory, the recorded test results are reorganized and processed by a report genera-tor developed on Microsoft Excel. The Excel report generator is used for organize test results, calibrate the deviation of the instruments, calculate the flow coefficient of the product, gener-ate performance diagrams of the products, generate test reports for different purpose of use, and save the test data and results on the server of the company. Above all, an upgrade of the data logging system for the three flow test benches was needed. Depending on the conditions of each test bench, the project is implemented and designed the following three parts: • A hardware upgrading (flow rate computer) for the air flow test benchA new signal indicating device for replacing the old flow rate computer is purchased from Italy by the company. The new instrument contains filter function to stabilize the flow rate value. • A software upgrading (Excel report generator) for all the test benchesVisual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language is used for developing functions such as data communication, signal decoding and user interface developing in Excel. • Develop of an automated data visualizing system for the air flow test benchData communication from the new instrument to a PC through serial port and Mod-bus RTU interface is established. The data visualizing function is compiled in the Ex-cel report generator for the air flow test, realized by VBA programming.