Title: Development and control of broken-strap monitoring system for newspaper flexi-roll machines

Authors: Yun Lei; Yaoyu Li

Addresses: Water Technologies Business Unit, Siemens Industry, Inc., 2607 N. Grandview Blvd., Suite #130, Waukesha, WI 53188, USA ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Rd., Richardson, TX 75080, USA

Abstract: Strap breaking is a significant maintenance issue that occurs when the newspapers are bound using single or double parallel straps on flexi-roll machine during the rolling process, resulting significant downtime and product loss. To prevent the occurrence of strap breaking, an automatic fault detection system is developed to identify the lateral deflection of binding straps in the early stage using the reflectance sensor. As the reflectance sensor has to travel along the increasing diameter of the paper roll during the rolling process, fixed mounting of sensor would not work. A mobile sensor-carrying mechanism is thus developed in this study, via a DC motor-driven linear actuator. The system is controlled with a programmable logic controller, with a neural network (NN)-based compensator to deal with the actuator deadzone. The photo-eye measurements are then used to detect the broken-strap based on a NN classifier.

Keywords: newspaper rolling; strap breaking; photo-eye; pattern classification; deadzone compensation; flexi-roll machines; newspapers; maintenance; automatic fault detection; reflectance sensors; mobile sensors; programmable logic controllers; PLCs; neural networks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAC.2012.045442

International Journal of Automation and Control, 2012 Vol.6 No.1, pp.81 - 103

Received: 03 Sep 2011
Accepted: 24 Nov 2011

Published online: 31 Oct 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article