Few jobs are as delightful as the pressure gauge check, right? There’s just nothing else like asking employees to walk through a maze of high voltage motors, chemical tanks, and forehead-level pipes. It’s okay, because pressure gauges are so easy to get to and read.
If you’re one of the rare few who don’t like this task, and who don’t appreciate the inherent safety risks involved, then you’ll be glad to read on.
It’s almost humorous that we keep asking our plant engineers, technicians, operators, and maintenance crews to walk an entire plant floor to check something as easy as a pressure reading on an archaic, inaccurate pressure gauge. It’s funny because it’s such an easy fix – one that’s been around for a long time now.
Here are two easy ways to dramatically improve the task of reading pressure gauges – both the time and effort it takes as well as the safety of taking such measurements:
There are still so many analog pressure gauges out there in terrible locations. Ask yourself this, how much would you improve your life, or the life of your employees, if you could make every pressure gauge reading accessible in a logical location – even consolidated to a relatively few displays? What safety concerns could you eliminate?
Switching all your dial gauges to a digital pressure gauge is about more than just the accuracy, or the easy-to-read display. It’s about the platform – which happens to be compatible with every other sensor in your plant.
We can’t speak for all digital gauge manufacturers out there, but we’ve developed a digital gauge platform that not only allows you to connect easily to centrally located displays, but that interface with all of your other controls. You could even send a signal to your PLC or DCS and read your gauges in a control room, log the data, and do everything else you’re already doing with level sensors, flow meters, etc.
A simple example would include tethering our pressure gauge display to several sensors – up to ten at a time – so you can cycle through all of them in one convenient location.
For those of you who don’t want to interface your gauges with your control system, you can put your pressure readings online. Once you connect your digital pressure gauge display to several sensors, you can send that data to the Internet for 24/7 remote access. What if the pressure gauge check was simply opening a browser on your computer and logging into a secure website? What if that website also logged the data, or sent alarms to your cell phone for anything outside of an acceptable level?
The same powerful equipment that powers our Tank Cloud solution can be used with the right pressure sensors and displays for convenient local access, constant remote access, data logging, and text message alarms.
The best part is that this is neither expensive nor difficult to do. Sensors certainly cost more than cheap, disposable dial gauges, but are capable of so much more. But we’re still talking individual components in the few hundreds of dollars. The installation is quick and straightforward, and we’ll walk you through interfacing with the Internet in only a few minutes.
The bottom line is simple – there is a much better way for you and your employees to get your regular pressure gauge readings. Let’s save some time, increase productivity, and improve the safety of a mundane task by taking your pressure gauges to the next level. Contact us to discuss the details.
