As a plastic container manufacturer, understanding your leak tester's HMI capabilities is key to maintaining an efficient leak testing process that ensures you deliver high-quality products to your customers.
In this blog post, we'll explore the key features and benefits of an HMI and give insight into how to leverage your HMI's capabilities to best fit your manufacturing line needs.
Keep reading to learn more!
What Is The HMI and How Does It Help The Leak Testing Process?
The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) is any dashboard, interface, or screen that allows anyone in an industrial setting to interact, monitor, and control their machines and processes.
The HMI on your ALPS leak tester is a tablet built directly into the machine, giving you real-time data to help you understand the current leak testing process. For example, an HMI can show operators the speed of a conveyor belt and also gives the operator the ability to change that speed by simply pressing a button on the HMI touchscreen.
Let’s dive deeper into some of the key features of your ALPS Inspection HMI.
HMI Capabilities: Key Features and Benefits
Validate Your Machine
The HMI offers various methods for ensuring your leak testing system operates at peak performance and delivers precise results. One such method is the automated self-test feature, which allows you to put a calibrated leak into the system, simulating a hole in the container to test the machine’s performance without any user intervention. You can also tell the machine to issue a warning or completely shut down if it does not detect the calibrated hole size — all from your HMI touchscreen.
Pinpoint Issues
The HMI also helps you pinpoint and narrow down any issues that may arise during the leak testing process, which are often a result of a change within the production line. The HMI helps you understand where these changes are coming from and why these changes are happening, giving you valuable insight into how to best troubleshoot the issue. For example, an individual station counter can indicate if one station is bringing down the whole system. On the other hand, if all the stations are rejecting containers, you may have identified a plastic container defect issue.
Looking for more tips on how you can keep your ALPS leak testing machine running smoothly? Read our blog!
Real-Time Data Collection and Visualization
The HMI provides real-time data collection and visualization, allowing operators to monitor the leak testing process as it happens. This feature shows the entire leak testing cycle in an easy-to-read format on the HMI screen. Everything from pressure to when valves turn on and off is stored at your fingertips for easy viewing.
Operators can also generate shift reports from this data, including production counts showing how many containers the leak detector passed and rejected, giving an in-depth view of its performance that operators can access via email either onsite or remotely.
Track Changes
The "track changes" feature on the HMI gives the operator valuable insight if something goes wrong with the leak testing process. The ability to log and date stamp any changes made to the leak detector, including who made the change, allows the operator to go back through the recorded history and troubleshoot the issue using a cause-and-effect approach.
This feature is also a great learning opportunity. For example, taking the time to understand the connection between the change and how it impacted operations is an excellent way to educate operators on the leak detector's functions, preventing future adverse changes or adjustments that may lead to more issues.
Guided Setup
The user-friendly guided setup feature minimizes the learning curve for new operators and streamlines the training process. It presents a clear, onscreen step-by-step process for recipes, allowing even the most inexperienced operator to efficiently set up the machine for the new container.
The HMI-guided setup feature frees up valuable time that could be used for more in-depth training, like our ALPS Peak Service Training program, where one of our professional Service Technicians provides hands-on training on your ALPS leak testing machine. This on-site training program helps your team become the experts, giving them the knowledge they need to optimize machine performance and troubleshoot issues at their facility.
Learn more about how you can empower your team with our ALPS Peak Service Training Program!
Remote Support
What happens when an operator runs into issues they can’t troubleshoot?
The HMI is set up with a remote support feature, allowing a service technician or engineer to access the HMI offsite and provide a diagnostic report, helping to solve the issue significantly faster than it would take for an onsite technician to make it out to a site. For example, an ALPS technician may be able to pinpoint a failed component on the machine via the HMI and expedite the shipping of the part, ensuring your leak detector is back up and running as fast as possible.
At ALPS Inspection, we take pride in our unparalleled service and support. We are committed to supporting customers with their equipment from initial consultation through the machine’s lifespan. Learn more here.
Your ALPS Leak Tester HMI
ALPS Inspection strives to stay at the forefront of innovation. We constantly invest in research and product development and are proud to offer our customers leak testing systems that satisfy expectations.
Our engineering experts designed our HMI to make machines easier to use, diagnosing any issues and providing real-time information so operators can have complete insight into what’s happening on their production line.
We successfully introduced the newest HMI two years ago on our FlexPitch leak testing machine platform. The same HMI technology is now on 50 ALPS leak testing machines, including our latest QuickCheck single-head leak testing system.
Introducing QuickCheck
The QuickCheck linear leak testing system is an empty container, general-purpose leak testing machine that offers a range of features and benefits, including a state-of-the-art HMI with an easy-to-navigate touchscreen and guided setup software.
Other attributes of the QuickCheck include:
- Fast and simple installation
- Simple container changeover
- High-speed, integrated leak testing
- Adjustable rails, conveyer heights, and probe heights
QuickCheck is the perfect cost-effective leak testing system with its intuitive, user-friendly capabilities and increased speed and efficiency. Integrating the QuickCheck linear leak tester into your production line guarantees consistent quality in every container you produce.
Get the inside scoop on the 5 key benefits of QuickCheck now!
Leak Testing You Can Count On
ALPS Inspection is one of the few organizations exclusively dedicated to leak testing equipment. While other organizations may offer leak testing equipment as part of their inventory, we devote all our resources to providing comprehensive leak testing solutions tailored to your production process, backed by unparalleled technical service support.
We not only supply leak testing equipment that meets your needs but also possess the expertise and experience to keep your machines operating at an optimal level. As part of our commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, ALPS Inspection will offer HMI capabilities on all of its equipment moving forward.
By incorporating a reliable HMI into our innovative leak testing systems, we further enhance the user experience and streamline the leak detection process, ensuring our customers receive the highest level of performance and efficiency from their ALPS Inspection equipment.
Contact ALPS Inspection today to learn what our industry-leading technology, expertise, and dedication can do for you.
