EuroWire January 2020

Technology News

Length and speed gauge for bouncing, unguided moving products

APPLICATIONS that involve the production of long, continuous cylindrical products can pose measurement challenges. Products that cannot be well guided can move off-axis and out of the measurement range, making it difficult for traditional laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) gauges to keep the laser on the product’s surface. This results in hard-to-obtain and unreliable length and speed measurements. NDC’s new LaserSpeed Pro M Series gauge from the Beta LaserMike products family is designed to solve this problem. The patent-pending gauge uses an LDV optical technique that provides reliable and robust length and speed measurements of small, bouncing and unguided cylindrical moving products, from bare conductor wire to insulated primary wire and cable. The LaserSpeed M Series gauge enables manufacturers to effectively control product speed and process functions in challenging applications. Manufacturers can benefit by reducing product give-away, minimising scrap, avoiding loss in productivity and downtime, and realising other savings. Rod cleaning for reduced die friction and wear Installed in-line after a simple rod reverse bending descaler, the SB (smooth brush) system from Decalub removes excess rod scale, converting the scale into ultra-hard micro-abrading rotating pads that provide a white metal, clean satin finish. It is suitable for dry cleaning applications, H/C and L/C, including 0.98% C, eliminating the need for acid cleaning. Continuously liberated rod scale pads provide receptive 3 to 5 micron bonding sites (similar to phosphate crystalline morphology), enhancing lubricant pick-up and adherence at high drawing speeds. This enables powder lubricant to be chemically and mechanically interlocked to the rod surface, forming a high-performance anti-friction and anti-wear conversion coating that is claimed to perform comparably to, or better than, zinc phosphate or other in-line wet pre-coating chemicals. Decalub www.decalub.com

▲ ▲ The new LaserSpeed Pro M Series gauge can measure moving wire

Beta LaserMike – an NDC Technologies brand www.ndc.com

Testing times for offshore cables

High-voltage engineering specialist EDS HV Group has completed a cable testing campaign for Vattenfall at Horns Rev 1, after the wind farm experienced network issues. For the first time for the offshore wind industry, EDS used damped AC testing (DAC) to collect partial discharge (PD) and tanδ data to clarify the condition of the array cables and subject the entire array system to a high-voltage withstand test. Luke Bishop, group engineering director at EDS, said, “Damped AC testing is a real step change in the industry. VLF [very low frequency] testing has been the ‘go-to’ test system to date. However, despite VLF’s advantages, it doesn’t have the benefits offered by DAC to test long lengths of array cables through multiple switchgear positions and collect PD and tanδ data, all from a single point.” Using damped AC to test all array cables from one single point on the offshore platform avoided multiple transfers of equipment and personnel. EDS HV Group www.edshv.com

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January 2020