3 Design of Mixing Units - Herbst Planetary Mixer

3.5 Electrical Engineering 25Figure 4:Temperature Measuring System with Infrared Transmittancea) (on the left) installed in the Planetary Mixerb) (on the right) Sensor3.5.3 Program controlThere is a constantly growing demand for a constant quality of the mixing process. Thequality of the product should be guaranteed even with personnel changes or frequentchanges of products. Furthermore the end user often asks for a quality certificate, i. e. amixing protocol, from the producer. This should not present any problem thanks to controltechniques. Programming may correspond to the product which results in a smoothmixing process. Important parameters, such as temperature, pressure and revolutionscan be registered and considered by means of modern sensors. Single components of themixer, like drive, vacuum pump, heating or homogeniser may be controlled individually.This guarantees an optimal mixing process. The revolutions of the stirrer could be controlledeither depending on the present product viscosity or the shear sensitiveness. Fordegassing of the stirred product or sucking in additional mixing components the vacuumpump may be connected and the planetary mixer will open on it’s own towards the endof the mixing process. Even dosage, discharging and cleaning can be integrated into theprogramming, so that the personnel does not have to attend to the machine at all times.Thus several mixers may be operated, respectively different works be carried out, at thesame time, which results in saving time and costs. Important phases of the programmay be signalised optically or acoustically. Registrating measured values guarantees bestsafety techniques, i. e. switch off the stirrer when the temperature limit is exceeded.