Wrinkling - additional monitoring

Recently I was visiting a well known metallizer manufacturer and this was an observation that came from some of our conversations.

I had been looking at metallizers and thinking that in so many ways they had not really changed significantly in decades.  The basic wire fed evaporation source was easily recognised as working in the same way.  There have been changes behind the panels in that the power supplies are more sophisticated and power is applied better and more uniformly and similarly the wire feed is better than it was. 

I was looking round at things that make the life of the machine operator easier. One change stood out as being both simple and helpful and that was the view into the system.  I have lost count on the number of occasions where it would have helped in diagnosing a problem if I had only been able to see better into the system to look at different parts of the winding to see where winding problems were beginning.  Generally we had one or possible two windows to look through and possibly a strategically placed mirror added inside the system to give some view of an obscured part of the system.  This has all changed with the miniaturisation and price reduction of camera systems.  I had previously worked on a vacuum process for roll coating explosives where we controlled the system from behind a blast wall and so our only view of the system was via cameras. This made me familiar with split screen multiple view displays but even the 10 – 15 years ago the camera technology was still quite bulky and so these cameras were sited outside the system pointing in at various angles to give us the necessary vision.  This was never as much or as good as we wanted.   Now the cameras have become small enough that they can be fitted with easy within the system and cheap enough that it is possible to consider using many cameras within the system to give all the necessary views to help with diagnostics.  What is more it is almost as cheap to use colour cameras as it is to use black and white.  The same rule applies as ever it did and that is that it is critical the lens of the camera is protected from any stray deposition.

Thus it is now conceivable to have a view of the film as it comes off any high wrap, spreader or bowed roll as well as out of the metallizing zone. This means that identifying where wrinkles start should no longer be a guessing game. Our first thought is always that the deposition has caused the problem but there are occasions where that is not true and it is always expensive in time and money to be trying to solve the wrong problem.

Retrofitting is generally more problematic than installing during the system build but as most of this is just cabling this should not be too difficult.

So if this has persuaded any of you to retrofit some cameras or for those of you ahead of the game that might have already done so I would be delighted to hear how you have got on with them and if you have experienced any problems.