February 2020Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration
Whenever the flow of gases needs to be adjusted or monitored, Kobold’s model UTS variable area flowmeter for monitoring gas burners offers a solution. This compact measuring instrument can be placed at various locations, precisely where required. Recently, the company was tasked with optimising gas burner production line monitoring in order to achieve a ‘No Product Rejection’ status.
The task
Lighting machine manufacturers generally require several small and one large annual maintenance session on their production lines. This means shutting down (completely dismantling) the production lines. All failures to be fixed, broken or worn parts replaced, burners and valves refurbished and production lines reassembled.
It is only after such maintenance, that production restarts. Each production phase of the renewed line must be resynchronised, each burner reset at the correct temperature and the entire production process adjusted in order to manufacture the highest quality product. This requires not only precision but is time consuming and involves a significant quantity of reject product. The time consumed and the wasted goods cost money, which may result in a serious competitive disadvantage in the market.
Kobold’s UTS solution:
Production lines are equipped with UTS type variable area flowmeters: one built into each gas circuit for burner control. Retrofitting of machines without major modification, even with 10-20 flowmeters, is easy due to UTS’s compact design and small footprint. When a production line produces a perfect product, the process values are recorded. Following the next shutdown, and before starting, all burners are set up to the recorded values. It takes only a few seconds then to set each burner for optimal operation. Production can then be restarted in a short time and the quality of first finished product is always perfect. Total investment is returned after only a few maintenance cycles. Other typical examples include monitoring engines and the supply of laboratory equipment with different gases.
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