ORLANDO, FLA. — Glycon Corp. President Jeff Kuhman has a new patent-pending system to measure screw and barrel wear — and he doesn't think his competition will mind at all.
“None of the competition will be upset because it will generate more business for our industry,” said Kuhman during a presentation at NPE 2015.
He said he will have more information on the system in 90 days and that it will be ready for market within six months.
At NPE, he displayed an electronic probe that is dropped into a specially designed port in the barrel to calculate the rate of wear on the screw.
Currently companies tear down machines during downtime to check the wear.
“When a technician goes out, he usually spends the entire weekend. It takes hours and hours, probably 30, to tear down 20 machines and check the wear,” he said.
In 2008, Kuhman designed a system that worked well in the first trial. The first generation Flite-Scan, he said, “had a permanent probe mounted on the barrel. But the environment inside the barrel proved too hostile for a permanent mount. So we said, ‘Why does it have to be permanent?'”
Kuhman concluded that as long as he could access the screw to measure enough revolutions, he could provide an average that would tell the story.
The system measures wear per cycle, per hour, per number of parts and per pound of material run. It measures in thousandths of an inch.
“It is not telling you when to change, but you can relate it to cost and decide yourself,” he said. Kuhman called it a way to use information to help processors be more efficient.
Glycon is based in Tecumseh, Mich.