Honeywell Process Solutions has released Precision FotoFiber, a fiber orientation-angle sensor that helps paper and board makers improve over-all product quality while reducing waste and lowering production costs.

The company says the sensor is ideal for manufacturing large runs of newsprint, fine paper, containerboard and folding boxboard and minimizes the need for manual monitoring by mill personnel. Its camera and powerful illumination technology automatically adjusts to varying machine speeds and sheet surface characteristics to capture high-quality sheet surface images.

The automated approach helps reduce variations in web fiber orientation profiles, which can cause a range of imperfections in paper and board products such as stack-lean or paper jams in sheet-fed devices, mis-register in color printing, twist in multilayer board and weakened corrugated containerboard.

The sensor allows mill personnel to electronically monitor fiber orientation throughout the entire production process, alerting supervisors immediately if a product deviates from standards. Honeywell says that the system reduces the need for laboratory analysis of fiber orientation profiles, minimizes time needed for corrective action when flaws are detected and ultimately results in higher-quality products with less waste.

Supporting speeds up to 2,000 m/min., Precision FotoFiber uses a built-in image control unit to manage both camera and illumination pulse intensity and length. The full distribution of fiber angles is computed from each image, so that both the average fiber angle and the surface anisotropy are measured.

The sensor automatically adjusts illumination and imaging parameters for varying speeds. Intelligent operating algorithm mitigates the effect of uneven illumination, ambient light and dirt/dust build-up. The sensor provides surface fiber orientation angle, anisotropy, MD/CD orientation ratio and max/min orientation ratio analysis derived from captured image using a proprietary algorithm. It reports trends and profiles for these analyzed variables.

The system displays the latest captured surface image with overlaid fiber orientation angle distribution as polar plot to operator for inspection. Overview display shows an additional polar plot for fiber orientation angle distribution which is updated at a higher rate than the image.

Honeywell Process Solutions, www.honeywell.com/ps.

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