EP0141719A2 - Apparatus for continuously making various articles from mineral fibres - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to an installation for the continuous production of various mineral fiber products (3). Adjustment parameters must be modified at the level of the devices of the production line in a manner corresponding to each product to be produced, at each passage from one product to another. To this end, the individual adjustment parameters for a new product are first adjusted by hand, by means of setpoint adjustment devices (16), during a test cycle, and they are lied to. a key (21), in a read-only memory (22) under a specific address for the product. If a new production of this same product is to be resumed later, the set of associated setpoints is transferred from the setpoint memory (22) to a CPU (11), which causes an immediate conversion of the set of the production line or the intended part of the production line to the new product. Instead of setpoint adjustment devices (16), in automatic operation, manual correction devices (25) are connected to the CPU (11) and allow fine adjustment of the stored setpoint values according to the circumstances present in each particular case. The invention applies to the production of various mineral fiber products.

Description

The present invention relates to an installation for the continuous production of various mineral fiber products, consisting of a plurality of devices, most of which are provided with elements for adjusting the parameters specific to the product produced.

Such an installation for the manufacture of mineral fiber products, usually referred to as a production line, consists, from the fiberizing station to the packaging station, of several devices which act on the mineral fiber product with a view for example to '' add binder, compress it, harden it, cut it in width, cut it in length, cover it if necessary with a facing, roll it up, stack it, l 'to wrap up. Such a production line is described for example in document DE-OS 31 00 003; the problems relating to the application of a facing on such mineral fiber products are more particularly explained in documents DE - OS 30 36 816 and 33 25 341 while those relating to the control of a winding station in end of production line are in document DE - 0) 33 14 289.

Most devices act on the product in a specific way for this product and must therefore be adjusted again each time you switch from one product to another. This adjustment is not only necessary when the product to be produced is new in itself, that is to say that it has not yet been manufactured, for example for a sheet of mineral fibers of a special width, but also when the line is used for the production of conventional products per se, but produced alternately.

If the passage of new products that have never been manufactured on the line, generally takes place only a few times a month, the transition to different products, in accordance with orders incoming, as a rule takes place several times a day or even an hour, which makes it possible to respond very precisely to the needs expressed by customers.

To this end, corresponding changes to the parameters set must be made to the processing equipment on the production line. In this case, one comes up against the particular difficulty that the parameters set do not always lead to exactly predictable product properties and, moreover, that from one case to another, different product properties can be obtained. If, for example, the compression grip of a pressure roller is set to a value of 8 cm, the web of continuous mineral fibers is certainly compressed there to a thickness of 8 cm, but it may be that it then resiliently resume a thickness of 12 cm. The elastic recovery of this same layer of mineral fibers is also not always precisely precisely at the same height, but at different heights depending on the consistency of the fibers, the binder content, its degree of hardening, etc. Such heights differing from one case to another can again influence subsequent processing operations, for example the winding operation as such, the length of ply necessary for the wrapping path of the roll, etc., being It is understood that other quantities which also vary according to the circumstances can again intervene here, such as for example the binder content.

All this has the consequence that a combination of unfavorable parameters can lead to the production of waste even when all the parameters have been precisely set on all the devices according to the product to be manufactured. In the most unfavorable cases, the identical adjustment, which shortly before still resulted in obtaining a satisfactory product, can, during a following passage or a conversion to this same product, lead to a result which is no longer acceptable, because in the meantime other circumstances have arisen which lead to an unfavorable accumulation of deviations in the properties of the products.

In addition, during the interval of time which is necessary to modify the parameters at the level of the apparatuses, the line obviously also necessarily produces rejects, which can give an accumulation of quantities of considerable falls in the case where conversions are frequent; these quantities are not only lost as marketable material, but also require considerable costs for their elimination. The quantity of scrap produced is obviously all the more important the lower the qualification of the personnel in charge of the installation. In the case of 24-hour work, necessary for the manufacture of mineral fibers, variations in the qualification of personnel are inevitable.

The object of the invention is to provide an installation for the continuous manufacture of various products made of mineral fibers, which makes it possible to switch from one product to another, rapid, independent of the qualification of the personnel and without excessively sensitive production of waste. .

This goal is achieved by the fact that, for each product manufactured for the first time on the line, a manual adjustment of the devices is carried out, the values found are then stored as set values as data associated with the product in question, data which can be recalled at any time under a common address corresponding to the product, applied as an order to the control elements and temporarily modified in a pre-established area, without however the set values obtained manually being modified.

Insofar as a product must be manufactured for the first time on the line, the control of the line is carried out by hand by highly qualified personnel who select likely settings and modify the parameters during a test cycle in such a way that a desired product quality is obtained. In this case, the setpoint adjustment devices are used as simple control elements by means of which rapid variations of the adjustment can be carried out and monitored by qualified personnel, in order to achieve individual combinations of the chain. the desired product quality. When the desired product quality is reached in this way, the settings thus acquired are taken over as setpoints in the ROM and are stored as data associated with the product. They can in this way be called at any time via the specific address of the product, in common for all devices.

The setpoints can be adjusted at the setpoint adjusters to an average value, if necessary by corresponding subsequent corrections made by highly qualified personnel, for example after a relatively long operation of the line with the new product, this average value giving, in the case of the desired product, a quality of product in any case still acceptable taking into account the amplitude of the variations of the parameters to be taken into account which presents itself. Over time, less qualified personnel can also call these average values together, at the press of a button, after they have been stored in the fixed memory, so that the transition from the entire production line to these values pre-determined takes place automatically without any interruption in production or significant quantities of scrap being produced.

In this case, the quality of the product obtained on the basis of the newly called set values, may however from one case to another not be optimal, although still suitable for sale, and may furthermore change little little by little during production. To make adjustments in order to optimize the quality of the product, correction manipulations are planned and also allow less qualified personnel to make corresponding adjustments. This possibility of adjustment is however situated in a predetermined framework which certainly excludes gross adjustment errors. In addition, the adjustments are not introduced into the fixed memory and therefore do not modify the set value therein that this set value remains always available without modification. This guarantees that with the aid of the adjustment in a determined framework, it is possible to carry out optimizations, the basic adjustment for the product remaining however always available in accordance with the storage in the fixed memory. In this way, additive errors are avoided with certainty which would otherwise be inevitable in the case of multiple adjustments and corresponding storage of the values each time adjusted, in particular with low-skilled personnel.

Other details, features and advantages of the invention appear from the following description of an embodiment given with reference to the accompanying drawing.

The single figure of the drawing is a simplified schematic view and presenting itself as a mounting diagram of an installation according to the invention in the area of a winding station.

In the drawing, 1 designates a winding station as described in more detail, for example, in document DE-OS 33 14 289, to which reference is explicitly made. As explained precisely in this document, during the winding and wrapping of the sheets of mineral fibers in such a winding station, numerous control operations must be carried out and tuned in. to each other to obtain optimal product quality. Similar control operations as well as a reciprocal agreement of adjusted parameters must be carried out during previous work operations of such a production line, and in this regard, with regard to the problems posed by the application of a facing, it is worth citing the documents DE-OS 30 816 and 33 25 341 to which reference is explicitly made for other details.

The invention will be described below, for example, applied to the control of the carding roller 2 of the winding station 1. In this case, a sheet of mineral fibers 3 is brought by its front end to a conveyor belt 4 in the winding station 1, where the front end of the mineral fiber web 3 is returned by a straightening strip 5 and forms a coil 6. The carding roller 2 guides the curved front end of the mineral fiber web 3 to form the first turn and is then applied under a defined pressure against the external face of the coil 6 which forms and whose diameter increases, to regulate the pressure exerted on the turns and thus influence the final diameter of the formed coil.

To this end, the application pressure of the carding roller 2 on the periphery of the coil 6 is adjusted by means of a jack 7, for example a pneumatic jack. The cylinder is supplied with pressurized agent through a line 8 from a source of pressurized agent, not shown here, the pressurized agent line 8 containing a control member 9 which regulates the pressure of the agent under pressure in the cylinder 7.

The adjustment of the control member 9 is carried out by means of an adjustment element of a central control unit, abbreviated to CPU, designated at 11. A probing line 12 is connected to the pressurized agent 8 and transmits the effective pressure of the pressurized agent, present in line 8, to a feeler 13 in the form of a measurement transducer, which applies an electrical comparison signal via a power line 14 to the CPU 11, so that a regulating circuit generally designated at 15 is formed and ensures that the effective value of the pressure in the jack 7 actually corresponds to the value which is regulated by the CPU 11 on the adjustment element 10.

The adjustment value for element 10 can be adjusted by hand on a setpoint adjustment device 16 connected via electrical lines 17 and 18 having an inverter intermediate 19 to the CPU 11 in such a way that a direct adjustment of the adjustment element 10 corresponding to the set value adjustment 16 is obtained.

In this way, by adjusting the setpoint adjustment device 16, the personnel can directly modify the pressure in the jack 7 and thus regulate the action of the carding roller 2 on the reel 6 in the desired manner. As arrows schematically show, the CPU 11 supplies, in addition to the adjusting element 10, several other adjusting elements 20, for example in the area of the winding station 1 or in other areas of the line of production by means of corresponding adjustment data which is each time introduced by associated setpoint adjustment devices 16. In this way, each desired parameter of the production line can be adjusted to a selected value by means of an associated setpoint adjustment device 16, the CPU 11 or several central units of this kind and corresponding adjustment elements.

For a given product, the production line can thus be adjusted so that it gives an optimal product quality. For the individual parameters, in this case, average values are introduced into the setpoint adjustment devices 16 which allow deviations on both sides as much as possible without leading to the production of scrap.

By pressing a key 21, it is possible to store all the set values set by the CPU 11 via the set point adjustment devices 16 in a ROM 22 and store them there under a common address which is assigned to the product that has just been processed. When a corresponding product has to be manufactured again subsequently, it is possible, by means of a switch 23, to connect the output of memory 22 to the CPU 11, while the devices for adjusting the set values 16 are disconnected from the CPU 11 by a corresponding switching of the inverter 19 by means of a common switching rod 24. When calling in the read-only memory 22 of the address associated with the product to be manufactured, this memory provides the CPU 11 sets the stored values as fixed values and thus automatically ensures the adjustment of all the adjustment elements 10 or 20 in a manner corresponding to the adjustment previously carried out and stored. Therefore, it is possible, often without the slightest interruption in production, to immediately switch the production line to the manufacture of another product, which has already been manufactured previously. Of course, it is possible, in a manner not shown in detail, for example by corresponding delay elements, to cause a sequential conversion of the individual adjustment elements 10, 20 in such a way that the new adjustments are carried out. not in the entire production chain simultaneously, but one after the other, during the passage of a head end of the new product through the production line.

However, during the manufacture of mineral fiber products, it turns out that these same memorized set values and the parametric adjustments that they entail do not always result in the same product quality, but that certain quality differences may appear. This is due to the fact that a mineral fiber material is a product of relatively indefinite dimensions, so that in small variations in the properties of the product can lead to modifications of the production conditions which in the most unfavorable cases can '' add up to produce entirely different product qualities, despite the same adjustment of the production line.

This is why, it is further provided to associate, with each adjustment device the setpoint 16, a manual correction device 25 which is connected to the CPU 11 in place of the setpoint adjustment device 16 corresponding, when switching from manual operation by means of the setpoint adjustment device 16 to automatic operation by means of read-only memory 22, the inverter 19 connecting instead of line 17, a corresponding line 26 of the manual correction 25 to the input line 18 of the CPU 11. The manual correction device 25 allows fine adjustment between preset limits, the control or control signal that the CPU 11 applies to each control element 10 or 20 in a manner corresponding to storage in the fixed memory 22. By modifying the setting of the manual correction device 25, the personnel in charge of the installation can thus try to further optimize the qu the product's quality compared to the set average values. In this case, the manual correction devices 25 only modify the signal and not the average value stored independently of it in the read-only memory 22, which can only be modified by pressing the key 21.

When a new product must be passed, for example a width of a layer of mineral fibers which has not been produced until then, a pre-adjustment of the production line in accordance with the parameters to be adjusted according to the forecasts by highly qualified personnel, while the inverter 19 between lines 17 and 18 is closed, by means of the individual setpoint adjustment devices 16 and subsequent adjustment of the corresponding setpoint adjustment devices 16 is carried out at during a test cycle until an average setting for the individual parameters has been found for the new product which gives a desired product quality. This final state is checked by the manager and is memorized by pressing the button 21 in the read-only memory 22 in which it is stored under the address of the new product. Whenever this new product is to be produced again later, it suffices, in the automatic position of the switching bar 24, to call the corresponding address in the read-only memory 22 and to introduce it into the CPU 11 to guarantee the desired conversion of the entire production chain. Fine adjustments can be made using the manual correction devices 25, which influences the control signals applied at this time to the control elements 10 or 20, but not the fixed values in the read-only memory 22 which cannot be modified only by actuation of the key 21. Such a subsequent adjustment by means of the manual correction devices 25 can, if necessary, be carried out by less qualified personnel, since the adjustment of the stored values guarantees that one produces in any case a salable material. In this way, at the start of the production of a new product which has not been produced up to this point, scrap can certainly be produced, as was the case until now with each conversion or change of product, but during subsequent passages from the production line to this product, the production of waste is practically entirely avoided.

Claims (4)

1 - Installation for the continuous production of various mineral fiber products comprising a certain number of adjustment elements provided on apparatus of the installation for adjusting product-specific parameters, characterized in that: the parameters to be adjusted can be adjusted by hand on setpoint adjustment devices (16) and can be applied to the adjustment elements (10) by means of an electrical control signal produced in each value adjustment device setpoint (16). the electrical control signals can be stored in a read only memory (22) and be stored there as set values under a common address corresponding to a product determined to be manufactured; the setpoints can be extracted jointly, by calling the address, and can be applied as control signals to the control elements (10,20), and the control signals can be modified momentarily in a pre-established domain, without modification of the stored setpoints, by means of manual correction devices (25). 2 - Installation according to claim 1, characterized in that the actual values of the adjustment elements (10) can be adapted to the associated set value by an adjustment circuit (15). 3 - Apparatus according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that all the set values set by hand may be stored by a common storage order (button 21) at the same time in _the T dead emory (22). 4 - Installation according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that a manual switching device (24) for ensuring the switching from manual operation to automatic operation is provided, and using this device, the ROM output (22) can be connected to a CPU (11) and the output of the value setting device (16) can be disconnected from the CPU (1), to which the output of the memory device is connected manual correction (25) corresponding.

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