New drying systems offer more control, energy savings

Dri-Air is introducing Industry 4.0 technology, a solution that the company calls Dri-Air Dryer 4.0. The technology will automatically handle many functions, including measuring the level of ingredients, setting the level of dryness, reducing energy consumption and providing predictive maintenance alerts.

The relevant Euromap Industry 4.0 protocols still are being finalized. Once they are, Dri-Air's common control station will control and monitor all dryers throughout the plant. The control station automatically recognizes when dryers are added or removed by way of a unique IP address for each piece of equipment. With this technology, users will be able to preset common parameters, such as drying temperature, hopper level and low material levels, while also being able to specify particular parameters for specific jobs. Operators will be able to upload information to the dryer by scanning a bar code. 

The user will be able to easily generate a bar code for everything from the type of material to the job number to the material loader for which the resin is destined.

Laser sensors and load cells will calculate the resin throughput, while also monitoring and controlling the material level in the hopper and activating alarms for low material levels. Jason Sears, VP of operations, said that the availability of pre-set dryer parameters will eliminate the need to adjust the hopper fill-level switches or low-material sensors.

Additionally, Dri-Air is providing a new, optional regeneration mode for its dryers that are designed to handle at least 500 pounds an hour. The regeneration mode automatically sets the dryer in "static" mode when the regeneration cycle is complete. This enables the dryer to hold low dew points and further reduce what Sears said is already very low power consumption.

The company also introduced a compressed air hopper bank designed for high-value resins, particularly for micromolders manufacturing medical products. Users can employ the hopper banks, available in 1-, 2- and 3-pound configurations, to dry ingredients at three separate temperatures from 70 degrees to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

MAGUIRE PRODUCTS

Maguire launched its new VBD-600 vacuum resin dryer at NPE2018. The VBD-600 has throughputs of up to 600 pounds per hour, which the company said is ideal for customers that manufacture sheet and large automotive parts, as well as for other injection molding and extrusion applications. Other dryers in the VBD line have throughputs ranging from 30 to 1,000 pounds per hour.

A display on the control system's touch screen enables operators to track energy consumption over a specified period of time, such as a shift, day or month.

The mid-range dryer has the same features as other dryers in the VBD line, including a five-year warranty and software that constantly monitors drying conditions and makes adjustments to save energy. It also has as standard the capability to display and log energy consumption, showing both real-time and averaged values.

The VBD-600 uses only four-fifths of the energy compared to a similarly sized desiccant dryer and dries resin in about one-sixth of the time. It accomplishes this by using three vertically arranged components. First, the heating hopper warms the resin to a customer-defined temperature.

High-speed slide-gate valves dispense material to the next level, the vacuum vessel, with an accuracy of plus or minus 4 grams. By creating a vacuum, the vessel reduces the boiling point of water, forcing moisture out of the pellets. The last component is the heavily insulated retention hopper, which includes a transparent shroud to protect dry materials from moisture.

The user has precise control over material consumption due to load cells that monitor the weight of material in the vacuum vessel and retention hopper.

NOVATEC

Diagnosing dryer problems can take a long time. Novatec hopes to redefine machinery diagnostics with DigiTwin, a technology that provides a digital model of a dryer and is able to derive information from more than 20 separate component sensors embedded in the dryer to pinpoint the exact reason why something has gone awry.

The idea with DigiTwin is to have a digital twin of the machine, said Conrad Bessemer, CEO and managing partner of Novatec.

"Historically, on a dryer, you would have a sensor for air temperature, you would have a sensor for dew point, you might have a sensor for a few other things," Bessemer said during an interview at NPE2018. "What a lot of people were doing is taking that information from the PLC, from the actual process control. What it doesn't tell you is what is going on with the components."

Novatec wanted to move beyond the industry's habit of pulling only information that is available through the PLC, which has alarms on it.

"Most people ignore alarms," Bessemer said. "They just want to make parts." He said it's similar to the thermostat in your home attempting to communicate that the filter needs to be changed.

"I may sort of ignore it until I absolutely have to pay attention to it," he said. "Unfortunately, that is the way of the world. Here, with the additional sensors, we can sense, for example, that this filter is dirty. Otherwise what happens is that it would be telling you that the temperature is going up, and it could be for several reasons. One of those reasons could be that the filter is blinded and you are creating a heat situation, which is ultimately going to lead to a problem. But in this case, we are going to tell you exactly where the issue is."

Another example is a potential malfunction in the chain drive. DigiTwin will communicate it on the screen and then simultaneously send a text or email, whichever the user prefers. "Then you know exactly what it is and it's that part right there because it is showing you in the picture," Bessemer said. "Meanwhile, the PLC hasn't even detected the anomaly yet because the temperature hasn't gone up enough, so you are getting an early warning before an alarm even goes off. By the time the alarm goes off on the machine, your process is out of control. [The dryer] is overheating, and now you have a real problem, and you are not going to make sheet, you're not going to make film, whatever you happen to be making."

The technology is retrofittable to existing dryers. "For now, we're pulling sensor data, we're pulling PLC data, 20 points of information, not just process data," he said. "This is where most new machines should go but not everyone is going to replace all their dryers tomorrow morning just because we put more sensors on them. It doesn't work that way. So, the retrofittable sensors are where you can sort of build that up through Machine-Sense and take a fairly dumb machine and make it smart, which I think is a much better way of taking the industry forward. When it is time to replace a dryer, they you can get a smart dryer, but, in the meantime, it's not as if you're stuck in the past just because you haven't bought a brand-new piece of equipment."

MachineSense is a technology company focused on machine analytics. Bessemer is its executive chairman and co-founder. The company offers retrofittable machine-wearable sensors for monitoring, analyzing and predicting electrical and component performance.

Novatec also took advantage of NPE2018 to showcase its new self-adjusting dryer series that is marketed as Thermal+ NovaWheel Portable Dryers. The dryers are mobile units that automatically measure moisture in samples of the resin throughout the drying process. Once the moisture sample indicates that no further drying is required, the dryer automatically will adjust to bypass mode. Processors that work with nylon know how tricky that material can be, and this series is designed to handle nylons and other specialty materials, the company said.

"Everyone who processes nylon has trouble," said Mark Haynie, Novatec's drying product manager, in an interview at NPE2018. Over the past few years, the company has seen hundreds of specialty nylons developed for a number of markets, including automotive, medical, packaging and more. The business of molding commodity resins has continued to move offshore, and as a result, Novatec has seen quite a few domestic molders taking on projects running nylons and other thermally or visually sensitive resins like polybutylene terephthalate, PETG, and others for the first time. Those molders typically are using press-side dryers, which are more commonly used with commodity materials, to dry these trickier materials.

While most engineering resins require drying to a moisture level of 100 parts per million (ppm), nylon is roughly 500 ppm to 800 ppm, Haynie said.

"Molders not accustomed to these parameters tend to overdry the material, which invariably will make the part brittle and fail," he said.

Novatec has adapted two of its technologies from central drying products for this series. Those are the Moisture Manager and OverDry Protection. Both of these technologies are designed to ensure that the dryer automatically responds to changes in resin moisture and ambient conditions that can lead to improperly dried resins, Haynie said.

"They have features that eliminate the possibility of overdrying nylons and other sensitive engineered resins," he said. In addition, the technology controls the drying temperature to limit or eliminate the possibility of discoloration or polymer breakdown in sensitive resins like PC, PET, ABS and other translucent and colored resins.

WITTMANN BATTENFELD

Wittmann Battenfeld is offering a new generation of its Aton segmented wheel dryers, which became available for purchase at NPE2018.

The Aton H is a compact, portable dryer that can process up to 200 pounds of resin per hour. It comes in three sizes, with airflows of 1,059 cubic feet per hour, 2,472 cubic feet per hour and 4,237 cubic feet per hour.

A USB interface enables users to import up to eight material data sets. If a processor is using a Battenfeld injection molding machine, the dryer can connect to it via a router, allowing control of the dryer from the primary machine's control.

Aton H series dryers are available with the Basic, Plus and VS options.

Aton Basic H dryers feature the material saver function to prevent over drying, as well as dew-point management that automatically adjusts the temperature for desiccant regeneration to save energy.

Aton Plus H dryers have additional energy- saving features. For example, a thermal energy-saving function called 3-Save is standard. Using 3-Save, the dryer heats the air for regeneration of the desiccant inside a special heating tube and then uses a heating element to raise the temperature of the air further before it is blown onto the desiccant. The dryer automatically adjusts the temperature of the regeneration air to the optimal temperature for drying the desiccant.

Aton VS H dryers integrate a vacuum blower for material conveying in the frame under the drying unit. The VS option allows the dryer to be connected to multiple conveying units. Users can operate and control the dryer and conveying units separately.

A sensor at the material loader detects when the material level falls below a minimum level, allowing for just-in-time conveying.

The dryers with the VS option have centralized dust separation and collection that is accessible for easy cleaning.

Other optional features include:

• A return-air cooling coil that is integrated into the filter housing for improved efficiency and easy repair.

• A micro particle filter offering dust separation of up to 99.9 percent

• High-temperature construction that allows for drying temperatures of up to 356 degrees Fahrenheit, up from the standard 266 degrees.

Phillip Britt, correspondent

[email protected]

Contact:

Dri-Air Industries Inc., East Windsor, Conn., 860-627-5110, www.dri-air.com

MachineSense LLC,

Baltimore, 443-457-1165,www.machinesense.com

Maguire Products Inc.,

Aston, Pa., 610-459-4300,www.maguire.com

Novatec Inc., Baltimore, 410-789-4811, www.novatec.com

Wittmann Battenfeld Inc.,

Torrington, Conn., 860-496-9603,www.wittmann-group.com