Industrial Process Heating
|
Infrared Heating Improves Automotive Headliners Ever had a problem with the headliner cloth hanging down from the ceiling of your car? Advanced Energy has been working with Duke Energy and Guilford Mills to eliminate this problem for good. Guilford Mills laminates foam to various fabrics for automotive headliners and upholstery. As part of their ongoing quality improvement program, Guilford has been working on improving the strength of the foam-to-cloth bond. They have known for some time that the bond strength varies seasonally and felt that residual moisture in the foam might be a contributing factor. Guilford called on Duke Energy to partner with them in solving this problem. After considering the options, they felt that preheating the foam with infrared (IR) might be the best solution for this problem. Duke Energy suggested that Advanced Energy demonstrate the benefits of Infrared Heating for this application. A 72 kW pilot unit was installed on Laminator #1 and the results were just what was hoped for. Bob Jenkins, Senior Industrial Engineer for Guilford Mills, put it this way, "IR preheating improved bond strengths by up to 10%. Possibly even more important - bond strength variability was reduced by a factor of three. That means it will be highly unlikely that any of our foam will fall below our minimum bond strength criteria. The result is more first quality product." As a further benefit - maintaining high bond strengths has been a limiting factor in setting the laminator speed. The improvement in bond strength may allow increasing laminator speed by up to 40%. More on this item in later editions of Solutions and Results. Duke Energy and Advanced Energy have helped Guilford Mills develop bid specs, select prospective vendors, and evaluate bids for this project. Installation of the 100 kW unit is set for this Fall. A second IR preheater is planned for Laminator #2 shortly thereafter. For More Information Contact Mark Gentry at (336) 679-4020 or mgentry@advancedenergy.org.
|