michenfelder elektrotechnik

We can facilitate a price comparison
To allow you to make a fair comparison, we have decided to expand our product range to include
the low-cost moulding sand moisturising system LC. It is the alternative to competitors’ systems
available in the market. The moisture probe is installed on the belt upstream of or in the used sand
weighing device. This facilitates a true price comparison.
Scope of delivery
The LC system consists of a self-cleaning NF-SR moisture probe. The measurement generator and
the processing unit are located in the separate steel-plate housing. The moisture values measured
in Volt and the evaluated material temperature in oC are transmitted to the processing unit for
conversion to a percentage moisture value. Forty years of experience at Michenfelder have gone
into this data conversion process. The system has been designed for installation and
commissioning by the customer. To facilitate this, we supply a CD ROM with commissioning report,
program flow visualisation and instructions for the adjustment of the characteristic curve using the
customer’s PC or laptop.
Operating principle
When commissioning is complete (when the calibration value curve has been drawn up), the NF-
SR probe measures the initial material moisture. The integrated processing unit then calculates the
volume of residual water to be added depending on the batch size. At the same time as the used
sand flows into the mixer (filling process), the calculated water volume is automatically metered out
to the required final moisture level that was preset.
The principle of measuring moisture upstream of the mixer
With regard to hardware technology and the measuring point upstream of the mixer, the LC system
provides you with the same kind of solution as that offered by the competitors. If you are about to
make this investment decision, you must remember that when measuring material on the belt or in
the used sand bunker, in principle, only part of the volume of material in a full mixer batch can be
recorded. This means that the accuracy of the initial moisture with reference to the entire batch is
only an average max. of ± 0.2% H2O (in the 1st standard deviation). Depending on the clay
content, this can result in variations of up to ± 5-10% in compactability at the moulding machine
directly. This is common to all systems that measure moisture upstream of the mixer.
Who is the LC system designed for?
There are customers who, for financial or other reasons, cannot or do not wish to exploit the full
potential for reducing the moulding sand related scrappage in their production system by improving
moulding sand quality. In cases such as this, customers are chiefly concerned with improving sand
preparation processes in the areas of mixing, moulding and casting generally. Therefore, if the
primary motivation is to avoid “extreme outliers” in the area of moulding sand moisture that can
frequently result in production stoppages, then the installation of the low-cost moulding sand
moisturising system is a suitable alternative.
Given the growing requirements in modern foundries, investments must be quickly
amortised, i.e. they must pay for themselves. This is best achieved by fully exploiting all the
optimisation potential provided by measurement and control technology in order to reduce
scrappage in a sand preparation plant. For this, we recommend Michenfelder’s modular
Moulding Sand Management System FoMaSys.