Radio telemetry reduces operating costs of conveyor ovens

Citation

(1998), "Radio telemetry reduces operating costs of conveyor ovens", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.1998.12927aaf.001

Radio telemetry reduces operating costs of conveyor ovens

Radio telemetry reduces operating costs of conveyor ovens

Grant Instruments launched at Finishing Excellence a real-time monitoring system for conveyor ovens. The Squirrel RF400 offers instant temperature monitoring, via a licence-exempt radio telemetry system.

The Squirrel RF400 allows production personnel in automotive, white goods, and decorative and architectural finishes markets, to make fast decisions which can impact production costs through energy savings, reduced configuration time, and improved production yield.

Grant Instruments developed the system in cooperation with Midlands Electricity's Powerline Energy Technology Centre. A study had revealed that inadequate monitoring and record-keeping lay behind deficient control of energy costs in manufacturing industries.

At a recent Powerline seminar to the metal finishing industry, entitled Gaining More from the Electricity Market, the keynote speaker was John Bennett, chief executive of the Metal Finishing Association. Having reported the results of a benchmarking study he went on to state: "Energy can typically cost manufacturers £40,000 to £50,000 a year. When you consider the effort put into controlling people of equivalent cost, you realise the importance of controlling energy costs."

The Squirrel RF400 is believed to minimise production downtime because there is no need to delay processing to allow it to exit the oven following temperature or conveyor speed modifications. The transmitter also remains in the oven to provide real time indication of temperature while baffles and heating elements are adjusted, avoiding the necessity for repeated time wasting runs to optimise processing temperature.

Two versions of the Squirrel RF400, based on 418MHz and 433MHz licence-exempt frequencies, are available for use in the UK and the European Community. They offer instant and accurate data acquisition on up to six thermocouple channels. The transmitter, which is housed within a rugged maintenance-free thermal barrier, sends readings at one second intervals. The readings are received by a radio receiver located up to 100 metres from the production line, and written directly to a PC hard disk.

Grants Instruments' new oven temperature monitoring radio telemetry system was demonstrated at the Powerline Energy Technology Centre. The working process demonstrations also featured ITW Ransburg's new Aviator spray painting technology, a new short wave infra-red oven from Advanced Infra-red Systems and paints supplied by Thomas Howse

On-line software permits simultaneous graphical on-screen monitoring of oven temperatures. The graphs can also be printed from Windows, and the data further analysed using either Grant's Paintwise for Windows software or most popular spreadsheet programs such as Excel and Lotus 1-2-3.

Paintwise provides white goods, office furniture, automotive and architectural component manufacturers with advanced paint cure calculations for rapid interpretation of oven temperature measurements. It can also help oven and paint suppliers to optimise their products for specific applications.

By regularly analysing temperature profiles using Paintwise, manufacturers can reduce the incidence of oven faults and boost process repeatability, thereby improving quality and yields. With reduced downtime, productivity rises. And with improved efficiency of oven operation, energy costs also decrease.

Paintwise is compatible with Grant's complete range of Squirrel oven loggers. With the Squirrel RF400, which uses unique remote measurement technology for realtime temperature monitoring, Paintwise provides on-line interpretation of results for fast-response decisions which can substantially reduce production costs.

The software provides customised tabulation and graphing of up to eight temperature channels, either on screen or printed out. Features claimed include full annotation of graphs, zoom, scrolling cursor with value readouts, and autoscaling. For correlation of plots with actual time and temperature readings, split screens can display graphs, recorded data, and process parameters. There is a choice of paint cure calculations, including a percentage of cure calculation. The process can be clearly visualised by displaying four cure thresholds while, for process control, "best cure" curves can be overlaid on the graphs.

An additional benefit claimed of Paintwise is that it minimises administration time by automatically producing documentation supporting an ISO 9000 quality regime.

Details are available from Grant Instruments (Cambridge) Limited, Barrington, Cambridge CB2 5QZ. Tel: 01763 262600; Fax: 01763 262410.