Motivation

Maintaining research equipment is a critical part of any research facility. Many of the experiments require the environment under which they are conducted to be precisely controlled. The Mass Spectrometry Facilities at Montana State University depend on roughing pumps to bring much of their lab equipment from atmospheric pressure to a medium vacuum. If these pumps failed during an experiment the facility would not only have the expense of repairing the pump but also any damage to the lab equipment caused by a loss in vacuum. The final cost of the failure can be determined by taking into account the loss of the sample being processed which could have been culmination of months of research. Preventing equipment failure is the most time efficient and cost effective way to maintain operation of lab equipment.

This project will develop a monitoring system for the vacuum roughing pumps of Mass Spectrometry Facilities to detect potential failures in time to mitigate damages and catalog the overall health of the equipment. A network of sensors will be used to monitor system critical parameters of temperature, current and oil level. Individual sensor data will be cataloged to a dedicated computer. This computer will include fault detection, operator alert system and a user interface to allow an operator to visually analyze the data.