Connect an older machine without replacing it

Somewhere in your hall stands a machine that has done its job for twenty years. The mechanics are fine. The problem is the cabinet next to it: controls nobody makes parts for anymore, a screen that goes black now and then, and no way at all to see how much the machine ran today. The operator writes the counter on a whiteboard at the end of the shift, and someone in the office types it into a spreadsheet on Monday. A new machine costs a few hundred thousand euros and arrives a year from now. We make the old machine smarter.

Keep what still works

A machine wears in two ways. The mechanics wear slowly and can almost always be maintained: bearings, guides, and motors can be bought or overhauled. The controls age much faster. The manufacturer ends support, the spare PLC on the shelf is the last one, and the software sits on a laptop with a version of Windows that no longer connects to anything. Once that cabinet fails, an otherwise healthy machine stands still.

On top of that, an old machine tells you nothing. It does not count, does not report a fault, and does not know how long it stood still. Your planning works with yesterday's figures, and the maintenance team only hears something is wrong when the operator calls. Replacing solves that, but at a price and a lead time that rarely work for a mid-sized workshop. A retrofit solves it for a fraction of that, and the machine is not out of service for weeks.

Prepare before the production stop

We do not start with a plan for the whole hall. Together we pick the machine that hurts most: the bottleneck in the line, or the one everyone knows has controls on their last legs. We walk around it, look in the cabinet, draw up what is in there, and talk to the operator who knows the machine best. They often know exactly which sound it makes just before it stops.

Within ten business days, a working retrofit is in place. Not a report, but sensors, a gateway, and a screen on which you see the first real counts. Usually that can be done on a weekend or during a shift change, so production barely notices. If it turns out along the way that the machine is mechanically too far gone to invest in, we tell you right away. If it works, we take on the next machine the same way. The sensors we choose are the same as in IoT devices and sensors, so a line with five different brands of machines still speaks one language.

Add data without risking control

In a retrofit, the machine stays where it is, and we replace or add what is outdated. That usually starts small: a few sensors at the spots that matter, a current measurement on the main motor, a counter on the output. We connect them to a small industrial gateway that passes the readings on over your network. The machine itself does not notice. From that moment, you know per hour what it produces, when it stood still, and whether the power draw deviates from normal, which is often the first sign that a bearing is failing.

If the controls themselves are the problem, they come out. We replace an outdated PLC or relay logic with a current type you can still buy parts for in ten years, and put an operator screen next to it that your operators understand. We rewrite the logic of the machine, and you get that logic back documented. It is the same work we do in Industrial automation and PLCs, only now on a machine that has been running for years, where we first find out exactly what it does before we touch anything.

Leave the machine supportable

A retrofit adds a piece of electronics to a device you bought. We make sure it stays that way. Every change is in a schematic, you get the PLC logic as a readable file, and the gateway talks through open standards, so you are not tied to us or to a vendor who raises the subscription price next year. Your own maintenance team can get in and understands what is there.

The readings go to a server in the EU, or to a box in your own utility closet if you would rather send nothing outside. If you want to see the figures of all your machines side by side and next to your planning, we connect that to Data and reporting. And if modified controls touch the safety functions of the machine, we look together at what that means for CE and EMC certification, before the machine goes back into production.