Improved Wear Monitoring in Diverse Polymer Applications

Tribosonics Ltd为一系列工业市场和应用开发新型测量技术，并已向塑料和聚合物传感市场推出并正在提供一种名为polymerSENSE（TM）的测量服务，用于塑料和聚合物传感市场。测量作为服务（SAAS -- Sensing-As-A-Service）提供，用于监测注塑和挤出设备，特别是螺杆和料筒的磨损。当螺杆和料筒是新的时，螺杆和料筒之间的间隙为0.1mm。随着时间的推移，螺杆磨损（螺杆通常比筒体磨损快一个数量级），具有几个负面结果：系统的效率降低，导致设备的输出减少，从而降低生产率和盈利能力。一些聚合物加工机提高螺杆的转速以增加聚合物产量，但这会导致能源使用增加，影响盈利能力和产品质量。由于螺杆和机筒之间的差距中的剪切增加，所得聚合物产品的质量降低。这导致磨损的机筒/螺杆组件的废料增加，利润减少。有大量的变量影响测量（温度、聚合物材料、传感器的频率、传感器的尺寸、机筒的厚度、螺杆上的螺纹的宽度、螺杆尖端的形状、测量速度，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一起工作，以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.