After nearly one year’s installation, commissioning, and trial production, the single-step intelligent rubber mixing production line developed by Yiyang Rubber & Plastics Machinery Group Co., Ltd (“Yiyang” for short hereafter) recently passed acceptance inspection and was handed over and put into operation at Guiyang Hongyang Seal Component Company (“Hongyang” for short), marking that this technology that has been proven in the tier industry has been successfully applied in the rubber products industry.
At Hongyang, the correspondent saw that the production line was located on the right side of the rubber mixing workshop. Unlike the original three old production lines, the new one is automated, with fewer operators and higher production efficiency. Beside the automatic rubber filter machine, an operator can monitor the running status of the production line through a display screen. Raw materials in a proper proportion such as rubber, carbon black, sulfur and so on are continuously fed by a belt conveyor into the upper tandem internal mixer. After being mixed in the lower internal mixer, the materials are automatically sent into the intelligent open mill unit for repeated pressing and mixing. Then, they are transmitted into an automatic rubber filter machine to filter out impurities. After cooling down, the rubber film is produced automatically and continuously. The whole process is highly automated and integrated. “In terms of practical results, single-step intelligent rubber mixing is obviously superior to traditional two-step mixing,” says Wu Jiewen from the company’s Environmental Department, with his thumb up. “Before long, we will replace the remaining three old production lines with the single-step intelligent rubber mixing production line.”
Feeding and conveying of materials on the production line
According to a Yiyang engineer, this technology, based on the one-step rubber mixing technology that has been proven in the tier industry, is developed to meet the development demand of the rubber products industry for environmental protection, safety, efficiency, energy saving, and smartness. Compared with the traditional technology, the new tandem internal mixer is able to finish master batching and final mixing in one step, thus doubling the production capacity. In this process, both the master batching and final mixing procedures are controlled by the same rubber mixing management system, which leads to stable quality. Since the filling powder, ingredients, and auxiliaries are conveyed and mixed in a closed system, little pollution is generated.
In particular, the sealing device for the new-type wearing ring adopts a C-C composite material which lubricates itself without the need of any lubricating oil. This not only prevents the rubber materials and the environment from being contaminated by lubricating oil, but also reduces the daily oil consumption of the tandem internal mixer by more than 40%. Tandem internal mixers have a much smaller footprint, which means less investment in workshop construction. In addition, one team can finish two processes – master batching and final mixing, which means a reduction of 50% operators. Featuring variable speed, variable clearance, and good effects of high-speed supplementary mixing, the intelligent open mill unit realizes fully automated rubber turning and tamping, with the function of continuous and automatic output of rubber films. The online automatic rubber filter machine is characterized by small temperature rise and insignificant change in Mooney viscosity before and after filtering, which greatly improves the quality of rubber filtering. No smoke is generated in the production process, so a good working environment can be maintained. In the cooling and output process, the films are automatically divided into three equal parts and repeatedly cooled through three routes. The rubber film finally produced perfectly meets the dimensional requirement for vulcanized rubber seals.
The production line in operation
Since Yiyang put forward the technical scheme of single-step intelligent rubber mixing last year, the technology has attracted a lot of attention from users of rubber products. Currently Yiyang is cooperating with, in addition to Hongyang, a number of enterprises in many other fields for the production of automobile and auto-engine synchronous belts, cable sheaths, etc., so as to upgrade the production of rubber products by building more single-step intelligent rubber mixing production lines.