Fluke 3563 Vibration Sensor System

The Fluke Corporation is an American electronic testing and measurement equipment manufacturer. The company was founded in 1948, and since then it has built a reputation for the rigid standards of quality for their equipment. One example of their measurement equipment is their Fluke 3563 vibration sensor system, designed for Smart Industry applications.

The sensor system combines a high-frequency piezoelectric sensor, two MEMS sensors, and a temperature sensor. The collected data will be sent to a gateway, which is connected over ethernet, WiFi, or 4G to the Fluke Key LIVE-Asset™ Portal.

Hardware & design

The casing of the individual sensors looks well-designed. The sensor has a round design, measuring 68 millimeters in diameter. The height of the sensor is just a bit more than 53 millimeters, and it can be attached to equipment through both an epoxy or a screw mounting bracket. For industrial usage, we would recommend the screw mounting bracket, as it dampens the vibrations of the equipment less, thus getting better measurements. The casing is not ATEX approved, but it’s IP67 rated (just like the gateway) and it has a shock limit of 5000 g peak. 

The sensor system houses a high-frequency piezoelectric sensor for low- and high-frequency vibrations in the Z-axis, which is the main sensing axis. In addition to this, the system also houses a temperature sensor, and two MEMS sensors for low-frequency vibration measurements in the X and Y orthogonal axes.

The housing hosts six 3.6V 1/2 AA Li-SOCl 2 batteries with a claimed battery life of at least one year for 144 uplinks per day. However, in our general experience with IIoT sensors, the battery life might be significantly increased or reduced depending on the usage.

Software & configuration

The sensor system makes use of the subscription based LIVE-Asset™ Portal software from Fluke for data collection, analysis, and sensor configuration. The application includes customizable frequency band measurements, automatically generated thresholds based on asset details, trend visualization, and frequency identification graphs.

Most prominent feature

We believe that the most prominent feature of the Fluke 3563 Vibration Sensor System is the combination of the high-frequency piezoelectric sensor in combination with the two MEMS sensors. This combination facilitates a wide frequency range for measurements.

Conclusion

The Fluke sensor system is a well designed hardware package, which has a strong advantage by using various types of vibration sensor for a very wide frequency range for measurements. However, unfortunately, the software side of the system comes with a (bigger) disadvantage, the mandatory Fluke Key LIVE-Asset™ Portal. In our eyes, a mandatory closed-source system to view and analyze sensordata is a drawback, as it lacks the possibilities to seamlessly integrate with existing asset management systems or other condition based monitoring systems. If you don't mind operating in the closed source Fluke platform, this sensor system might be the one for you!