Mr. Rahul Jha, Technical Consultant – Sales and After Sales, DEM S.p.A., talks about the machinery and solutions for wire and cable industry.
DEM Group provides equipment for the production of shapes made in steel, copper or aluminium; for the fabrication of cold rolled or stretched reinforcing wire; for the calibration and annealing of IT spring wire; for the forming of cored wire. Coilers, spoolers or bar bundle facilities complement the lines to collect the end products. DEM delivers full automation controls and the Wire Up, an IIoT package specially developed for the wire industry. Augmented reality together with advanced connection solutions allows for commissioning as well as maintenance, remotely. Additionally, DEM supplies cassettes and auxiliaries for CRLs and micro cassettes and tooling for drawing lines. DEM engineers, supplies and commissions:
Profile Wire Rolling Technology: Equipment and complete lines to form flat and shaped wire, for custom and standard design profiles, in ferrous and non-ferrous materials of all grades, with final applications in the automotive, oil & gas, chemical, spring making, power and distribution, door and window hardware, house appliance, textile, watch and luxury, medical, precision and mechanical industries.
Reinforcing Wire Rolling Technology: Equipment and complete lines for cold rolling of wire rods to produce reinforcing wire with positive ribbing or negative indentation in coils and bars. Final applications are in concrete reinforcing welded mesh, lattice girders, columns, fabricated rebar and stirrups used in industrial flooring, prefabricated structures, building foundations, civil construction and infrastructures.
Reinforcing Wire Stretching Technology: Equipment and complete lines for stretching of hot rolled rebar, aiming at improving its tensile properties while keeping its extraordinary ductility unaltered. Stretched material is widely used in the construction and armouring of buildings and bridges as well as in all applications where concrete reinforcing material has outstanding resistance paired with exceptional elongation capacity.
DEM stands for continuous innovation in the wire industry, with a goal of boosting uptime, yet meeting unparalleled performances.
DEM Technological Packages for Profile Wire Rolling
The technological packages developed by DEM are a remarkable example of the way the company pursues innovation for the benefit of the wire industry.
Automatic Loading and Unloading Of Spools
The system is aiming at limiting damages to spools, in most cases due to manual mishandling. Preserving spools is very important in all those applications where the same spool filled by wire is used for further pay-off operations, downstream. Moreover, the system contributes to enhancing the efficiency of operations.
Inline Cleaning of Tools by No-Contact System
Keeping rolls clean plays a key role in the rolling process. It allows getting the end product with a very clean and brilliant surface, limits the call for maintenance (removal of sticky particles from roll surface), promotes longer life of tools, and it is beneficial for final product accuracy. The no-contact cleaning system of DEM avoids any accumulation of dirt in the proximity of rolls, completely.
Stand Continuous Shift for Uniform Tool Wear
By moving the overall stand sideways automatically with continual minimal shifting, the complete surface of rolls is going to be used equally over time, with uniform wear resulting along the full barrel of the roll. This results in the maximisation of the tool’s lifetime while minimising their cost impact.
Fully Automatic Edging Stands
The latest generation of edging stands allows accurate alignment between rolls with outstanding results as to corner radii accuracy. Additionally, all operations are made easier using memorized receipts, cutting time for threading the wire.
Wire Surface Polishing System
As the call for a brilliant surface of the end product is increasing, DEM introduced a surface polishing system that is aimed at removing dust while getting glossy finishing of wire.
Inline Continuous Dimensional Check and Correction
Automatic roll-gap control for no less than exact end product geometry – this is obtained by the latest generation electronic non-contact devices or by traditional contact type units, all sourced from primary brands highly specialized in the measuring technology, coupled with a software application specifically developed by DEM.
Perfect Traverse Coiling
Even for tiny profiles as 1.5 x 0.2 mm processed at 1200 m/min! DEM delivers also equipment for precise cut-to-length bars and calendering (bending coilers) equipment for loose coils collected on tubular carriers.
Double Coilers with Automatic Wire Transfer
The system allows the unloading operations of one coil, while another is processed avoiding unnecessary downtimes.
Watch: Cable & Wire Fair Show Reel
DEM Technological Packages for Reinforcing Wire Rolling and Stretching
The DEM technological packages are innovative add-ons, suitable for installation either on existing or newly-built machinery.
Adaptive Straightness Control
The ASC technological package is the DEM’s new breakthrough solution to produce straight bars perfectly thanks to a completely autonomous control process. At the end of the day, the wire manufacturer can experience huge advantages highlighted by a steady and consistent straight product output paired with a higher production uptime.
High Speed Shear
More than 6 million bars per month are automatically collected in sub and/or master bundles conveyed through tying machines, then delivered, weighed and packaged. That is what DEM means for high-level cold rolling lines for the production of reinforcing wire, in bars. This is achieved through the DEM’s High Speed Shear package.
The DEM high-speed reinforcing wire rolling lines reach a production speed of 5 m/s (1000 fpm approx.) for bars as short as 2 meters (6.5 ft) or up to 10 m/s (2000 fpm approx.)for longer bars. All the above come out with a new noiseless bar unloading design.
The current record is set at 150 cuts per minute, with a length tolerance of less than 1 mm/m (0.039 inches/ft). So, at a glance: easy operator set-up, zero set-up time for a cut-to-length change, length tolerance less than 1 mm/m and 2x faster than the market average.
Digital Gap Control
The DGC is a solution that grants automatic roll gap positioning and assisted wire threading. Such a roll positioning is initiated either by manual input (basic/stand-alone solution, by using product recipe) or automatically, through the connection to the Wire Weight Control*.
The main advantages are: no line stops for roll adjustment, line quick setup and, as mentioned above, a line setup semi-automatically/automatically controlled through recipes input or through data received from the Wire Weight Control.
Assisted Weight Control
The Assisted Weight Control (AWC) is the DEM’s technological package for the production of wire at a lower tolerance limit to have weight in control, thanks to a continuous and automatic roll gap positioning system. Such a function is controlled by servo motors receiving input data from the Wire Weight Control and transferring them to the Digital Gap Control. Therefore, the AWC is a highly sophisticated yet reliable application made up of a reading system (WWC Wire Weight Control), a signal transduction system (DGC Digital Gap Control) and a drive system (servo motors monitored by the general automation).
The automatic adjustment allows working very close to the limits set by the norms, yet producing ever-compliant material. Thanks to this precise and reliable wire weight measurement, 100 percent production of bars meeting the minimum dimensions within the permitted tolerance range (thus, with the lowest weight per meter) can now be produced with the return of investment estimated in less than a year of plant operation.
Quick Cassette Change
The QCC is a really beneficial headway to cut the tooling time of cassettes. Normally a cassette changeover takes approximately 40 – 50 minutes: the QCC allows the reduction of such a time to 4 minutes only. It means that, in the case of a production program that calls for many cassette changes, a significant reduction of downtimes is achieved. Now, considering that frequent changes are increasing among all cold rolled wire producers, the QCC becomes a fundamental tool for all wire manufacturers aiming at improving the productivity of their lines.
Furthermore, the cassettes for QCC are carried out on special changing trolleys and exchanged during line stops. This means that no external lifting devices such as overhead cranes are needed, saving this way money for their purchase. Should these devices be already present, their availability for different operations other than cassette change will increase.
Lastly, the release of the in-line cassettes, their ejection, re-insertion and locking/unlocking are fully assisted with a significant reduction of risk of accidents for the operator.
Direct Wire Injection
The Direct Wire Injection is the DEM’s Technological Package for the integration of a cold rolling line with a mesh welding machine. This system serves to roll and directly shoot the cross wire onto the mesh welders. This leads to a cost as well as space saving since no material manipulation is needed and no intermediate stock for cross wire is necessary. Moreover, a newly patented and state-of-the-art OTO buffering (120 sec wire accumulation time) that is part of the system, ensures uninterrupted mesh welding machine operations, avoiding the stops which are normally required to weld the cross wire.
DWR – DEM Wire Rolling: A New Way to Process Wire
Markets demanding small and diversified production lots require increased flexibility on output capacities. DWR answers to this market demand, zeroing the set-up time, machine preparation, and threading and it provides a very high consistency in product characteristics. This solution has been developed by merging the DEM know-how of profile rolling and reinforcing wire rolling, combining all benefits of each technology. The result of this technical effort is mostly appreciable when a DWR line is combined with a mesh welding line: even in the case of large diameter bars, the DWR is able to directly produce straight bars, with high performance and with no additional straightening operations required. This means that the wire manufacturer can save a lot of space in his factory and he can organize the production with a “just-in-time logic”, instead of “warehouse logic”.
Furthermore, a new patented quick locking system of the rolling rings, combined with a fast roll positioning, allows a production line changeover and set-up in less than 12 minutes, this way remarkably reducing the downtimes.
Wire Up – The New DEM Digital Platform
This is the DEM’s IIoT platform specifically developed for the wire industry that ensures:
- Monitoring: check facts and figures about your machine, anywhere.
- Stay updated, always.
- Automatic alerts: Get noticed of any malfunction, non-conformity or missed targets.
- Troubleshooting: Get helped and act promptly based on the know-how your operators built over time.
- Maintenance: Take advantage of predictive maintenance thanks to memorized practices.
- Analysis: Explore your big data. It’s easy. Do it anytime, anywhere. Find ways to improve.
- Process modeling: Keep each and every task under control.
- Spare parts: Manage inventories browsing 3D drawings.
DEM strongly believes in the importance of digitalisation for the machine industry of the future. For this reason, we have developed a new digital platform, to monitor the efficiency of the line and schedule maintenance.
Also Read: From Parts to Peak Irradiance: Innovation Drives Miltec UV
Wire Up uses advanced analytics to help wire manufacturers achieve efficient operations. Moreover, Wire Up allows monitoring the efficiency of the line in real-time, analysing downtimes, pinpointing bottlenecks, suggesting predictive & scheduled maintenance of wear parts & components, monitoring spare parts availability, and keeping your team informed. The aim is to reduce time to market, increase repeatability, and enhance plant efficiency and safety. As of today, more than 100 wire manufacturers have chosen Wire Up, with some others joining soon.
* The In-line Wire Weight Control system is a system that controls the wire weight per meter in line, no matter the speed. The system can either work as a “stand-alone” or give closed-loop feedback to the DGC (i.e. Assisted Weight control).
