In 2018, the wave of intelligent manufacturing was born in the whole manufacturing industry, from intelligent manufacturing to Made in China 2025, it is the rise of China's manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is the basis of the national economy, is the foundation of the country, the foundation of a strong country, the rise of China's manufacturing industry is the rise of China. In the past, refractory enterprises to buy advanced equipment are imported from abroad, not only the high price, maintenance is not convenient. Now, the performance of domestic intelligent equipment far exceeds that of imported equipment, the price is more advantageous, better service and also more environmentally friendly.

In the refractory material production line, from the raw material automatic ingredients, automatic mixing, automatic weighing fabric, to the press automatic forming, automatic brick, automatic detection, take brick, palletizing, the whole process of unmanned operation. The intelligent production of refractory materials not only improves the working environment and greatly reduces the labor intensity of workers, but also improves the quality of products and work efficiency. Reduce enterprise production cost and management intensity.

Intelligent batching and mixing process

In the past, the refractory material mixing workshop, after breaking the crushed to the specified particle size of the raw materials need to be manually weighed, ingredients, mixing and blending. The operation process is very prone to deviation of ratio and uneven mixing, which seriously affects the quality of products. And at the same time, the working environment dust exceeds the standard seriously, which is a great threat to physical and mental health. Not only these, the traditional equipment also has a large noise, low efficiency, safety risks and other shortcomings.

A domestic company developed a fully automatic mixing system, conventional metering mode, through the feeding mechanism of the material from the storage bin to the metering hopper, and stop after reaching the formula weight. The feeding mechanism is equipped with screw conveyor, electromagnetic vibration feeder, belt feeder, rotary feed valve, chute, etc. according to the different material characteristics. With high precision and fast speed. Suitable for powder and granule materials with good fluidity. Very suitable for refractory material process with strict requirement of batching precision.

Intelligent forming system

In the production of refractory bricks, the traditional production process requires manual operation of heavy presses. It is not only time-consuming and costly, but also has a high scrap rate of the billet.

The fully automatic press developed by a company now is a high-tech product integrating machine, electricity, liquid, gas and computer, consisting of main structure, hydraulic system, feeding system, electrical control system, mold loader and unloader, etc. It can automatically complete the pressing process of fabric, pressing, demoulding, brick clamping and oil spraying, etc. By adopting various key core technologies, it can meet various raw material characteristics, shape structure By adopting various key core technologies, it can meet the production needs of products with various raw material characteristics and shape structures and sizes. It can easily and quickly change molds and lock them automatically. The machine also has a humanized operation interface and remote fault diagnosis technology, which is convenient for users to adjust parameters; by configuring a remote communication device, it can also establish a remote communication system for users to provide timely remote fault diagnosis service and greatly facilitate the improvement and upgrading of the program. Dust-free production environment, high degree of automation, small human factors, low labor costs and high production efficiency.

In terms of quality, the size of the products produced by automatic hydraulic press is precisely controlled, and the size is within the minimum error range, generally the size error of formed brick billets is less than ±0.5%. Minimize the porosity of the products and increase the density of the products. Effectively solve the phenomenon of powder agglomeration and segregation, to ensure that the powder falling into the mold cavity is uniform, so as to achieve control of the weight error of the brick within the requirements of the product. At the same time, it also significantly reduces the product defects such as missing edges, dropped corners, flying edges, pockmarked surfaces, layer cracks and distortions of the bricks due to the traditional brick press, thus obviously improving the quality of the products made.

Intelligent palletizing process

In traditional refractory enterprises, bricks need to be palletized manually for both raw and finished products. In the case of loading and unloading and automation systems, brick clamping devices (vacuum or mechanical clamping devices, or even more complex devices such as rotary clamping devices) can be installed and configured directly on the press to clamp and feed the pressed products directly from the press. On the other hand, there are system devices arranged after the press, such as kiln car palletizing system devices, which are usually designed and built on the basis of programmable industrial robots using special brick grippers (systems). In addition, automation in packaging and palletizing with all its needs, labeling systems and more are now possible with intelligent equipment.

Intelligent inspection processes

Traditionally, refractory bricks produced by refractory companies need to be inspected manually piece by piece after they are cooled out of the kiln. And now, refractory bricks by the electronic eye automatically detects whether there are cracks, missing corners, missing edges, layer cracks; and then by optical instruments to detect whether there are small defects; then, with ultrasonic scanning, laser electronic instruments and weight sensor device to determine the density of each brick, size, distortion, wedge shape and compressive strength, if necessary, also detect deformation modulus, etc.. Unqualified bricks are rejected and qualified bricks are laminated with cardboard and steel plates, automatically packed and sent to the warehouse.

The fully automatic intelligent equipment is only a small part of the intelligent manufacturing of refractories. In the future, refractory enterprises to achieve intelligent production line site production process management, site monitoring and control, including intelligent factory production process data collection and analysis, to achieve the production process, equipment, resources monitoring operable and visualization; to be able to support the requirements of collecting different site equipment data, support the production data and equipment failure information displayed on the screen of the monitoring station, to achieve the dynamic production process Monitoring and management; realize the interconnection and dialogue of intelligent equipment, robots and production lines, users of the whole process, to achieve high quality, efficient and flexible automated production under the interconnection of man-machine and machine-machine, etc.

For most Chinese refractory enterprises, the value chain process and business model of R&D-procurement-production-marketing-after-sales can achieve 30%-50% performance improvement in efficiency and cost, and the rest can be achieved through intelligent manufacturing. Manufacturing enterprises can only realize real smart manufacturing after digitalization of equipment, digitalization of workshops, and turning off the lights factory finally.

China is a world manufacturing power, Chinese manufacturing industry will conduct more profound research and practice on how to innovate its own concept, system and technology, establish its own industrial brand, and how to take a new step forward in the intelligence of industrial manufacturing. Around the strategic platform of Made in China 2025, the future Chinese industry will surely lead us to a magnificent transformation from a world power to a world power.