TECHNOLOGY | PROCESSING
with lab measurement, Golba said. The company has recently re-evaluated all of its
probes for both serviceability and manufacturabil- ity and has changed designs where needed for each. A recent compounding study confirmed that the probes have good reproducibility and repeat- ability. “These results demonstrated the quality of the probes,” said Golba. “The in-line measurement takes place under difficult and variable manufactur- ing conditions, but reproducibility was the same as the lab measurement, which is operating under ideal, controlled conditions.” He continued: “Another challenge is that lab instruments and in-line instruments are not ‘speaking the same language’. For example, the lab measurement is at room temperature and the in-line measurement is at melt temperature. We are working on lowering this communication barrier, which we think will facilitate a paradigm shift to in-line measurement.”
Applying Industry 4.0 On-line rheology and spectroscopy are particularly helpful for compounding recycled polymers or bio-based materials, as these materials can vary
and benefit from on-line tweaking, mostly by adjusting feeders, points out Charlie Martin, President of Leistritz Extrusion in the US. Data tracking and automation are increasingly
important for compounding equipment users, said Slayton Altenburg, Application Specialist at compounding equipment manufacturer TPEI. Integrating both upstream and downstream of the compounding equipment is critical. “We work with our vendors to incorporate their controls into our HMI [human-machine interface] where appropriate, and we also work with our customers to feed the ins and outs from our installation,” he explained. Altenburg said that TPEI seeks to learn what problems the customer is trying to solve in order to give them the best solution, which could range from simple read-only signals of machine param- eters and feeder settings for quality control and tracking to fully remote operator control locations. Employing sensors to monitor equipment
provides data that can be useful in troubleshooting and preventing or fixing problems. “One area we have found to really add value is the monitoring of electrical current to our heater circuits and water flow levels to our cooling circuits,” he said. “On the
salat@jwell.cn
sales@jwell.cn
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