The new machines in the two ranges differ from their predecessor models by a key, yet invisible feature: following the trade fair, they will be supplied as standard with a built-in connection to a cloud provided by Stauff. 

This offers users significant advantages – for instance with software updates. Up to now, Stauff Service had to contact the user of the machine and agree a time at which a network connection could be established and an update installed. Or, alternatively, the software was updated in situ using a laptop with a network connection. In future this can be done online. Stauff Service simply needs to agree a time with the user at which the machine is online and not in use.

Stauff experts can now also relatively easily transmit new parameter sets if the user of the machine is working with different tube materials for which the requisite parameters were not supplied when the machine was delivered. This addition provides the customer with a new benefit: the machine documents online in detail the assembly processes performed and enables them to be called up online. They can then be printed out and used as evidence of correct assembly.

A further benefit also comes from the option of viewing the machine’s history and parameters via an online service. Dipl. Ing. Oliver Wagner, Electronics Developer at Stauff and responsible for the development of the cloud connection, explains: “We can now analyse data together with the user and optimise the machine’s settings if we need to.”

One example of this is if the parameters show that the cylinder pressure in a certain process is always at the limit of a defined and stored threshold value. We can then specifically counteract this and so maintain the quality of cutting ring installation or forming at a high level. And if the machine were to malfunction, the cause can be quickly identified, as all the relevant data for the machine as well as for the individual tools can be accessed in the cloud.

Requisite data security is guaranteed in all the use cases presented here, as all data is exchanged encrypted with the cloud and vice versa. The data is therefore protected against unauthorised access, misuse and manipulation.

This cloud connection means that Stauff is manifesting key functions – and benefits – of ‘predictive maintenance’ in its machines, a development the entire industry is currently intensively discussing. This solution is achieved through the use of a built-in SIM card, which can be used in all industrial regions of the world. Existing machines can be simply and easily retrofitted with the module.