Last week, I went to a condiment factory in Jiangsu to do an equipment return visit. The workshop director Lao Chen pulled me to stand by the filling line for a full twenty minutes. The renovated filling production line in front of me is running steadily at a speed of 60 bottles per minute. Lao Chen pointed to the soy sauce shaking in the glass bottle and said: "Your flowmeter that can 'think' can now catch errors of three decimal places." As a technician involved in research and development, these words made my heart burn - the intelligent flowmeter that has been sharpened for three years has finally taken root in the filling production line.
The "old problem" of the filling workshop meets new technology
Everyone in this industry knows that the most feared thing about the filling production line is inaccurate measurement. In the early years, when using mechanical flowmeters, the measurement error could be as much as half a bottle when encountering sticky shampoo or jam with particles. Last year, a customer in Shandong was returned by the supermarket due to fluctuations in filling accuracy, and he was so anxious that he drove to the factory overnight to ask for an explanation.
It was that crisis that gave birth to our determination to develop intelligent flowmeters. The current third-generation product has a built-in dynamic compensation algorithm. Last month, in a test at a dairy factory, from thin pasteurized milk to thick old yogurt, the flowmeter on the filling production line can automatically identify the characteristics of the medium and adjust the measurement parameters in real time. The workshop director joked: "This thing is more flexible than the old workers."
Equip the filling machine with "smart eyes"
To talk about the essence of intelligent flowmeters, we have to look at its three unique skills on the filling production line. The first trick is "perspective eyes", which can even identify and remove bubbles in the liquid through high-frequency signal scanning. When a pharmaceutical company in Zhejiang was filling oral liquid, it used to be insufficient due to bubble problems, but now the qualified rate of the production line is directly pulled to the maximum.
The second trick is "memory brain". We have established a dedicated database for each flow meter. For example, a beverage factory in Guangdong produces two specifications, 500ml and 1L. There is no need to recalibrate when changing production. The flow meter automatically calls out historical data and completes mode switching in three minutes. Workshop workers now call this "fool mode" - it is indeed worry-free and can be operated with eyes closed.
The most amazing is the third trick "ear of warning". Last month, I went to a winery in the southwest, and their filling production line suddenly had a metering drift. Before the workers noticed, the central control screen popped up an early warning: "The flow meter at station 3 detected that the sealing ring is aging, and it is recommended to replace it within 72 hours." The maintenance team took it apart and saw that the rubber ring had fine cracks. This ability to predict the future shocked the equipment section chief who had worked for 20 years.
The road from laboratory to production line
Don't think it's easy to say now, but I made a lot of mistakes during the R&D. I remember the first time I took a prototype to the edible oil factory for testing, the vibration of the filling production line caused the sensor to misjudge, and the whole batch of oil bottles were filled to different depths. After returning to the factory, we added double shockproof brackets to the flowmeter and implanted an environmental compensation module in the algorithm. Now, even for high-viscosity materials such as chocolate sauce, the filling accuracy is still as stable as an old dog.
This spring, intelligent flowmeters were officially included in the standard configuration of our factory. After the filling production line of a daily chemical enterprise in Northeast China was transformed, the customer did the math: the material loss saved each year alone was enough to give double year-end bonuses to all workers in the workshop. Recently, they also connected our flowmeter data to the MES system, truly realizing the digital control of the filling process.
There is no end to the battle for accuracy
A few days ago, the technical department had a meeting, and the new intern asked: "Our flowmeter accuracy has reached 0.1%. Is it necessary to continue to improve it?" Lao Zhang, who is responsible for the algorithm, was anxious on the spot: "Do you know what a 0.1% difference on the filling production line means? An order of 100,000 bottles will be given away for free for 100 bottles!" I deeply understand this - last year, I helped a foreign-funded enterprise to make an aseptic filling solution. Just because the response speed of the flowmeter was 0.3 seconds faster than that of the competitor, it snatched the entire production line from the mouth of a German old brand manufacturer.
When I passed by the assembly workshop after get off work and saw the intelligent flowmeter being packaged for shipment, I suddenly remembered the old factory manager's words: "Good equipment should be like embroidery, with dense stitches and durability." This is very appropriate for the filling production line. For the next technology upgrade, we are planning to integrate visual recognition so that the flowmeter can not only calculate accurately, but also see clearly - after all, there is no finish line in the race of intelligent manufacturing.
