Building-site-compatible bolting documentation for wind energy plants. Klaus Teske from Maschinenfabrik Wagner GmbH & Co.KG/PLARAD, Much in the Windfair Newsletter

Extensive and flawless documentation of bolt fastenings is playing an increasing role in this. There are some projects exclusively using documented bolt fastenings as part of their quality control. It is increasingly important for documentation of bolt fastenings to be carried out in a simple manner, especially when bolting work is done at building sites themselves. In contrast to many of our competitors’ products, Plarad does not require the bolting equipment to be fitted with additional sensors in order to handle documentation. Torques and angles, if needed, are detected using internal sensors inside the hydraulic unit and the exact values measured during actual fastening of the bolts are simply archived in the control unit for the purposes of documentation.

Eliminating the need for additional sensors requires extra reliability, particularly on wet and dirty building sites. This means no need for sensors that might fail to operate properly due to a wet, dirty or oxidised plug contact or sensors that have been incorrectly connected or that might fall off in the rugged conditions of building site work or get damaged during transport.

Furthermore, the Plarad BE X32 control unit operates in fully autonomous fashion. It does need an extra PC at the site, either to call up the pre-defined bolting parameters or to document the actual procedures. The BE control unit can simply be attached to the hydraulic unit and is fully operational even in bad weather since it conforms to protection class IP 54.

Making it suitable for building sites also means taking into account various safety factors. If specified by the site supervisor, workers must enter their employee numbers or names into the control unit, meaning that every bolting procedure can be traced to a specific worker afterwards. The drive unit automatically detects the actual bolting device connected to it and associates that device with the procedure inside the control unit. This means that there is no chance of mixing up equipment. Each procedure can then be directly stored on the control unit itself so that the worker can read it back at any time. If an error is made in a procedure (e.g. due to operating errors or stripping of screws), the worker is informed of this via a fault notification. The corresponding data record is stored on the control unit to ensure that even faulty bolting procedures are documented and thus allowing for effective remedial work.

The data read-outs are stored in a database secured against manipulation and thus protected against tampering. If necessary, they can later be exported to an Excel file, making them available for further processing.