Sophisticated NC equipment used to produce Cannon mixing heads, the hearth of Polyurethane technology, cannot replace the careful handwork of the skilled workers that finish them one by one.
Frequent meetings with the international sales forces are organised to keep them updated on the latest technical and commercial developments. their trade. And we can guarantee their performance for up to one million shots, if properly run and serviced. The availability of a proper Service Kit, available as a spare part, even allows our local engineers to perform a full head refurbishment on site, saving our client ' s time and money.
CN: That head is on the market s i n c e t h r e e y e a r s, r i g h t? Any new entry in your head ' s catalogue for the 2016? FA: We have just announced our new version of the Cannon JL, the innovative head launched a few years ago for the large panel and refrigerator industries. The new Cannon JL Vector has now been tested successfully in production for 18 months, and it works fine. It ' s a new, simplified design of the former JL, with a more rational hydraulic circuit. It has been designed for those manufacturers of very large elements that require at the same time an improved foam laminarity during the injection and higher output values. We ' re able to guarantee, with conventional Polyol viscosities, a laminar flow at 2.7 kg / s output, which is what is required to produce high quality foams with very fast-reacting formulations, free from voids and air traps. We can deliver now a 26 mm and a 7 mm diameter models, and the series will be extended to other sizes as needed.
CN: What is Cannon Afros presenting at the K Show in terms of new dosing units? FA: Quite a lot, but I would not say new dosing units. I ' d prefer to call them the evolution of a series of proven machines, used worldwide successfully. A lot is happening on the control side, on the latest Cannon dosing units. We ' re oriented towards an Industry 4.0 concept of manufacturing. This means that all the interaction between the single components of a plant – dosing unit, mixing head, press, mould, carousel or fixed lines, a continuous foaming conveyor – must be tuned and played as an orchestra, composed by people, machines and devices. They must interact instantly, and there must be a certain level of automatism involved. To achieve this integrated operation, we must be ready to increase the level of our electronics from a simple system using I / O( Input / Output) logics to an intelligent combination of devices able to deal with unforeseen events, sudden change of ambient variables, frequent modifications to a planned production schedule. This is what we are currently doing. Where we used standard Siemens S7 Logic Controls now we use the latest 1200 and 1500 models, implementing our software programs on these two platforms. A PROFINET data exchange protocol allows for faster communications between the mechanic and the human players of this new game.
CN: What is precisely the target for this technological innovation? FA: This is more than innovation, this is the beginning of an Industrial Revolution, the Smart Factory is taking shape also for an application – P o l y u r e t h a n e s a n d r e a c t i v e formulations – that, due to the influence of a lot of chemistry-inmould, is still full of wizardry! The targets are two, one for our client and one for us. The customer will be able to program, execute, change and debug his production schedules more freely, achieving higher flexibility in his supply chain and savings in terms of plant efficiency. More time to produce, less downtimes. This will reflect in advantages along his whole production cycle. Our target is to be able to perform predictive maintenance on our client ' s plant, in order to suggest him a
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planned maintenance programme even for those components that seem to be working perfectly, but are already showing some deviation from their standard functioning. We can obtain this through the installation of special sensors on selected equipment – connected in real time with the central control, the operator and his technical manager ' s PC or smartphone. All data referring to these checked functions( the wearing of a seal, a fluctuation in the electric consumption of a motor, an unusual performance of a hydraulic or pneumatic circuit, etc.) allow the operator or his maintenance fellows to see immediately on a connected device – operator panel, PC in the control room, smartphone – a graph explaining that specific situation. This saves a lot of downtimes and repair costs. The machine becomes a combination of individual components with an individual life expectancy, not calculated in operating time but in terms of specific parameters( number of actions, electric consumption, mechanical tolerance, pressure of exercise, etc.) which constitute a bundle of information stored on the Cloud, made available by Cannon or on the client ' s own one. With it the management has a continuous pulse of the manufacturing situation, this reflects in economic benefits and increased productivity. Another target, for the customer: to obtain production statistics based on complex data. We used for the past 30 years to collect, store and analyse average production parameters. Now modern electronics and faster data throughput allow to record these parameters during the entire event. All these data becomes part of the production statistic report, at the end of an injection, of a shift, of a production day, week or month, available in real time on the machine, not later on an exported Excel table.
CN: Thank you for your time, Francesco. Anything to add? FA: We are designing the equipment for a new generation of producers, those who will work in a Smart Factory. We still like to talk face-to-face to Smart People, they stimulate our brain cells. Come and see us in one of our locations, around the world. Together we can make the Fourth Industrial Revolution!
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