PREVIEW:

A manufacturing control system and a predictive system for the start-up time of a mould

Due to an increasing trend in the polymer injection molding industry towards production of smaller sized batches the mould set-up phase is one of the main challenges to be faced in terms of reducing the batch production time, material waste and to improve productivity. The aim of this project is to develop an Advanced Predictive System (APS) to reduce the mould set-up time and providing a quality control system, based on historical data of the mould.

Preview

Setup of the project:

This Advanced Predictive System will consist of two modules: a Production Control System (PCS) and a Set-up Predictive System (SPS). The Production Control System (PCS) acquires real time data from the mould’s cavity pressure and temperature sensors (electronic or optical sensors) and the machine PLC, which will be wireless transmitted to the centralized server, modelled and analyzed by means of machine learning algorithms.

Displayed on the worker tablet will be the machine performance and recommendations of optimization parameters in case the quality of a plastic part is out of the acceptance range. The second module comprises a Set-up Predictive System (SPS). The main driver behind this system is to reduce the set-up time when a mould is installed on another injection moulding machine.

Then first a set of test injections are carried out. These will be compared with the historical mould trials stored in the Mould-DNA. Next, a set of transformations are carried out that lead to new optimal machine parameters.

Duration

The project started in January 2015 and its duration is 3 years.

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