Improved Wear Monitoring in Diverse Polymer Applications

Tribosonics有限公司为一系列工业市场和应用开发新型测量技术，并已推出并正在向塑料和聚合物传感市场供应一种名为polymerSENSE（TM）的测量服务，用于塑料和聚合物传感市场。该测量作为一项服务（SAAS—Sensing-As-A-Service）提供，用于监测注塑和挤出设备，特别是螺杆和筒体的磨损。当螺杆和机筒是新的时，螺杆和机筒之间有大约0.1mm的间隙。随着时间的推移，螺旋磨损（螺旋磨损的速度通常比枪管快一个数量级）会带来几个负面结果：1\。系统的效率降低，导致设备的产量减少，从而降低生产率和盈利能力。一些聚合物处理器增加螺杆的转速以增加聚合物的吞吐量，但这会导致能源使用的增加，影响盈利能力和产品质量。所得到的聚合物产品的质量降低，因为在螺杆和料筒之间的间隙增加了剪切作用。这导致磨损的桶/螺杆组件的废料增加，利润减少。影响测量的变量有很多（温度、聚合物材料、换能器频率、换能器尺寸、料筒厚度、螺杆飞行宽度、螺杆尖端形状、测量速度等）。该项目的重点是扩大该技术的规模，并扩大其在聚合物加工行业中的应用。Tribosonics将与Newton Gateway合作，减少将接收到的信号处理成可靠的磨损测量所需的时间和资源。

Tribosonics Ltd develops novel measurement technologies for a range of industrial markets and applications and has launched and is supplying into the plastics and polymer sensing market, a measurement service called polymerSENSE(TM) to the plastics and polymer sensing market. The measurement is supplied as a service (SAAS -- Sensing-As-A-Service) to monitor injection moulding and extrusion equipment, in particular the wear of screws and barrels.When the screw & barrel are new there is a clearance gap of the order of 0.1mm between the screw & barrel. Over time the screw wears (the screw typically wears an order of magnitude faster than the barrel) with several negative outcomes:1\. The efficiency of the system reduces resulting in a decrease in the output from the equipment and thus lower productivity and profitability. Some polymer processors increase the rotational speed of the screw to increase the polymer throughput, but this results in an increase in energy use, impacting profitability and product quality.2\. The quality of the resultant polymer product reduces because of the increase in shearing in the gap between the screw and the barrel. This leads to an increase in scrap from worn barrel/screw assemblies and a decrease in profit.There are a large number of variables that affect the measurement (temperature, polymer material, frequency of transducer, size of transducer, thickness of barrel, width of flight on screw, shape of screw tip, measurement speed, etc).This project is focused on scaling this technology and expanding its uptake within the polymer processing industry. Tribosonics will work with the Newton Gateway to reduce the time and resource needed to process the received signals into robust measurements of wear.