Complete alarm capture on a Sinumerik 840D sl

Alarms tell you more about a machine's day than any other data — and they are the easiest to lose. Checking at intervals only sees what is standing at that moment; an alarm that clears after two seconds is gone. Not every controller reports alarms the moment they happen, and every manufacturer does it differently.

The laboratory's A.Haas Multigrind CB with a Siemens Sinumerik 840D sl, connected through its EdgeBox. Grinding cycles with dressing, tool changes and door interlocks produce a mix of standing alarms and short ones.

• Standing alarms and the controller's alarm history.
• Alarms the moment they happen, including short ones that clear within seconds.
• The controller's own text, severity and time for every event.

Toleron collects alarms both ways — the moment they happen and by regular checks — and brings them into one list. Each entry keeps the key facts (code, severity, when it appeared, when it cleared) next to the controller's original message, so nothing is lost. A failed read never closes an alarm by mistake. Where a controller does not report alarms as they happen, Toleron checks at intervals instead and notes why.

• An archive of over a thousand events across dozens of different alarm codes, virtually all with the controller's own text.
• An alarm report that ranks faults by lost time and frequency, shows active alarms at the top and names the source of every line — so a limit alarm from a sensor is never mistaken for a controller fault.

Alarms became the most useful data in the machine park. Questions like “Which fault cost the most time this week?” or “What happened before this stop?” can be answered today. The unchanged archive is also the raw material for the assistant's answers about day-to-day operation.