Heating & Cooling System for Composite Part Production Facility
Gurit has been supplying leading OEMs with carbon fibre based Class-A composite panels since 2007. The company’s strength is its understanding of composite materials, structural design and materials processing which provides the capability to formulate, design, prototype and manufacture fully assembled, primed and coloured exterior body panels.
A flexible process heating and cooling solution that can be precisely controlled is vital to the manufacturing process. Gurit selected a Babcock Wanson Thermal Fluid System which is used in their multi mould production facility for composite panel production and hot roller heating for prepreg material production.
The Solution and Client Reaction
Keith Netting, Product Development & Industrialisation Manager and Sam Robinson, Plant Engineering & Maintenance Manager at Gurit Composite Components, comment: “The heaters are well constructed and easy to maintain and have performed well. One existing unit on site has run approximately 24/7 360 days with only one failure in eight years. The controls are straight forward without any unnecessary complicated add ons which is refreshing; they are constructed to carry out what's required and perform very well.”
Babcock Wanson’s TPC450LN fully automatic coil type, multi-pass thermal fluid heaters come complete with integrated burner, control system and safety devices. The system precisely matches fuel input to plant energy requirements for high efficiency operation.
The thermal fluid system is supplied with Babcock Wanson’s unique menu driven software, which provides Gurit with the facility to create up to 50 programmes for the simultaneous heating and cooling system of multiple users in a simple and operator friendly manner. It provides absolute control over the process as well as flexibility in the temperature rise and cooling stages. The software takes automatic readings every six seconds and the data is readily retrievable by simply downloading onto a flash drive. Statistical information is then available in a variety of formats, including clear graphs.
Temperature Control Units
The software operates Babcock Wanson Temperature Control Units on each mould tool. They are connected to both the heating and cooling distribution loops to automatically feed the hot and cold fluid to each tool as and when required, meaning that each part of the line can be at a different part of the thermal cycle at any given time.
Sam is very pleased with the service provided by Babcock Wanson: “We have experienced excellent service from Babcock Wanson. They are willing to help and advise as required, with several site meetings, until the correct solution for our needs was found.”
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