Abstract
A monitoring system of an extrusion line was developed. Three main hydraulic pumps support the extrusion line in MODAL. Data of energy consumption was collected from the power supply of these main pumps. Clip-meters were attached to the supply wires in order to get the amount of the energy consumed; one reading is recorded every 5 seconds by a PC where the data is saved. The signatures of the billets extruded were studied to understand the signature behavior. Max-Min boundaries were found and a fuzzy system that makes use of the boundaries was built to indicate the unusual situations. The real on-line output is crisp and not fuzzy. It can be an alarm, a buzzer, a stop etc. The output is designed to give an approximate description of the situation in term of a percentage. The proposed system worked well in defining the real situation of the extruder. For future work, some recommendations were presented. (C) 2007 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. All rights reserved