Sensor Launches New Real Time Nip Roller Profiling

Edited by the Printingtalk editorial team Apr 7, 2004

Sensor Products has released D-NipR, claimed to be the first dynamic, electronic, real-time nip profiling system.

Sensor Products has released D-NipR, claimed to be the first dynamic, electronic, real-time nip profiling system.

The system is a process control tool for any web-based production environment as it reveals inaccurate roll alignment, roll skewing and crown deficiencies.

Any of those problems can result in uneven processing, wrinkled or mottled products, compacted sheets, excessive sheet breaks and blackening during calendering.

D-Nip consists of a sensor element chain and data collection unit that is sited on the roll surface and journal.

Madeline Glomsten, nip products group manager at Sensor, said: "The sensor system measures nip width (contact width between rolls) across the length of the press as the rolls are rotating.

Dynamic nip measurement tools are the next step in the evolution of nip products and are particularly beneficial for rollers with interlock systems -- when the nip cannot be closed statically or the material on the rollers takes a set from static impressions.

The new product enables the user to make adjustments and observe results in real time, accelerating the diagnostic speed of a given section of a machine." D-Nip is temporarily affixed to one of the roller surfaces.

Each revolution of the rollers produces one nip reading that is transmitted via RF signal to a host laptop computer where the data is quickly displayed in a user-friendly graphical format.

By virtue of sophisticated circuitry the system calculates the time duration the sensor is compressed at the nip point, thereby enabling very accurate and repeatable nip width derivations.

Sensor claims that data integrity is ensured as a result of built-in redundancy within the sensor element actuators and employment of validation algorithms.