Nowadays, fault diagnostics is widely applied under Industry 4.0 to reduce machine maintenance costs, improve productivity, and increase machine availability. However, fault diagnostics are mostly post-mortem. When the fault is identified, it is already too late because damages have been done to the product and machine. This paper compares the efficacy of several signal data processing techniques for detecting faults that are about to occur. Our aim is to find an efficient way to predict the

more »

... lt before it occurs. A continuous wavelet transform synchrosqueezed scalogram was found to be most suitable for this purpose, but it is difficult to apply. A novel procedure is proposed to count the number of pulses in the synchrosqueezed scalogram. A new method for detecting the trend from the pulse counts is then developed to predict the fault before it happens. The procedure and method are illustrated with experimental data collected while running an automated double-thread trampoline webbing machine.