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Ilkay Özkisaoglu

Since 04/2021 149 Episoden

#126 sensXPERT: 3 Tips on material quality management

10.06.2024 8 min Staffel 5 Episode 83

Zusammenfassung & Show Notes

In this interview that Ilkay Özkisaoglu conducted during IFAT in München with Nicholas Ecke of sensXPERT - Optimizing Plastics Manufacturing, he gave us these three tips for materials producer and substrate producers once they are really dealing with materials:

First tip for materials processors would be to think about sustainability, about circularity of your products, of your source materials, of your processes.

Second tip would be to make the best use of the data that you have available. Many plastics processors have a wealth of data available from their machines, from measurements that they do in-house, and maybe from sensors that they already have installed in the mold.

Third tip would be don't settle for inefficient processes.

Listen to this episode on how AI can help you improve your material plastic's production process.

What are your experiences on handling polymeric materials?

CompositesLounge.com

Check out our YouTube Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiuH-mksgMs

Transkript

So wonderful good afternoon, dear LinkedIn community, Composites Lounge members and sensXPERT community. Now we are here at IFAT. IFAT is a environmental protection type of an exhibition with very wide technologies. The reason why I'm here is I will speak now with one of the sensXPERT experts about materials and recycling. We are here at the booth of - you can see it in the rear - Circularity for e-mobility and why that is. This will be explained now in the video. Now let me greet with you together Nicholas from sensXPERT. Nicholas, what is your job at sensXPERT? And can you explain us what sensXPERT is doing in a nutshell? sensXPERT is a venture of the NETZSCH Group, which many of you may know as a provider of high performance material characterization products that you know from the labs such as DSC, DMA, TGA, and so forth. And sensXPERT was founded to take the knowledge that NETZSCH has in material characterization and sensor technology and take this knowhow from the laboratory environment to the industrial production. What we offer is a solution that consists of a tool based in situ material characterization on the one hand, so we measure what the material does while it is being processed. And an AI solution that creates/uses machine learning models to evaluate this data and control the process to handle deviations. The measurement principle we use is dielectric analysis. This uses an electromagnetic field that directly excites the macromolecules within the plastic that is being processed. And so we get a very, very immediate response that tells us a lot about the state of the material in real time, inside of the mold. I work at sensXPERT as an application engineer, so I'm a go to person for all questions regarding materials and processes, both for our customers, but also internally for our R&D and other teams within the company. So as a customer, you will meet me, get in touch as soon as we move to towards more technical discussions on how sensXPERT and the Digital Mold technology can aid you in your processes. So Nicholas, let me ask you about the materials, which is your main activity. So today if I look at the materials science, you are seeing that the hardening and crystallization of polymers is very depending on very, very many variables, like for example, the temperature. And to me it looks like that each degree of variation or deviation from the temperature can have a significant significant impact on the quality of the material. So why is that? And tell me if you do not look after these parameters, what is the consequence? So in modern composite production, we want materials that are very reactive, because we like fast processes, right? To save time, to save energy. But at the same time, that makes the process more difficult to control because a lot of influences, tiny variations in the temperature, maybe aging during the storage or the transport of the material can have a significant impact on the process ability and also on the final properties of the part. And of course, that is something that we need to get under control in order to produce good quality parts, reproducible every single cycle. Another issue that is getting more and more important is the use of recycled material. We see an increasing push both in politics, but also in the society as a whole, to use increasing amounts of recycled material in plastics parts. We have EU legislation coming up that will force automotive manufacturers to use 25% of post-consumer recycled material in all new cars from 2030. And so there's, of course, a higher deviation in these materials intrinsically than in virgin material. And that is also something that we need to figure out how to how to handle. Nicholas, what are your three tips for materials producer substrate producer once they are really dealing with materials, what are your main three tips? So my first tip for materials processors would be to think about sustainability, about circularity of your products, of your source materials, of your processes, now. As we've discussed before, legislation is coming. Automotive is a prime example, but of course also in other industries. And so the time to figure out how to produce parts with high recycled material content is now. My second tip would be to make the best use of the data that you have available. Many plastics processors have a wealth of data available from their machines, from measurements that they do in-house, and maybe from sensors that they already have installed in the mold. And that data can give a huge advantage in making processes more efficient, more stable, more reproducible. And that is something that should not be neglected. My third tip would be don't settle for inefficient processes. If you encounter material deviations. The way to proceed is not to just operate with large safety margins or tolerate large amounts of scrap, but really to optimize the process in order to get maximum efficiency, minimal scrap. So my call to action obviously would be please get in touch if you have challenging processes, if you see material deviations in your production, if you just would like more transparency in what's really going on inside of your mold or during your process in general, get in touch. Let's discuss and see how sensXPERT can help you. So thank you so much Nicholas for all these informations about the materials and sensXPERT. So we are ready with our interview right now. And now we are walking and touring this show and I hope you have gained some few more insights about water, water sewage drainers, composites in the environmental technologies that I hope to see you soon again. Bye bye.