Used the Mumford Time Machine for the first time today - great piece of kit!!









Greg

Wow!

turbo-1, on 29 July 2010 - 07:47 PM, said:

Tiz innit

Guess you know how these are done (?) Drop two water drops one after the other. First water drop hits the reservoir surface and sends up a spout - second falling water drop hits the upcoming spout - and whoosh - little umbrella.

Greg

Neat, for sure! I visited the web-site, and it seems that the system can add up to some impressive money pretty fast. "Want options? That'll cost ya!"

Much cheaper than his competitors though - and spare a thought for us in rip-off Britain - your Dollar costs are turned directly into Pounds Sterling over here!!!! Now that IS expensive.
Greg

When I was a machine-tender on a new high-speed paper machine, we had some very intense strobes combined with high-speed video equipment to diagnose sheet-breaks. This was almost 30 years ago, and the system was named Instar. The recording system was in a gasketed white fiberglass enclosure mounted on a 2-wheeled dolly. It was the most ungainly outfit, but it helped us solve mysterious sheet-breaks. IIR, a second of live capture could take several minutes to play back.

One really nasty "mystery" was breaks at the size press (a two-roll press where starch was applied to the paper to help stabilize the paper dimensionally in changing moisture situations). It seems that we had condensation forming on the false ceiling 'way overhead, and the camera system caught a drop of water falling onto the sheet just before it hit the press. Instant sheet-break! Have a sheet break on a high-speed paper machine and you can start counting off your losses in tens of thousands until you clean everything up and resume production.

turbo-1, on 29 July 2010 - 10:02 PM, said:

VERY interesting Turbo!! I knew of HSF being used on weaving looms, and on car engines, also on some machine tools - but not heard of your application before.
Greg

cybermystic, on 29 July 2010 - 06:43 PM, said:

The tell-tale was a tiny glint of reflection of light from the strobe off a drop of water falling toward the sheet, then the sheet tore in the press and wrapped the top roll almost instantly. You could put a human there watching for problems and they would never catch that. It was probably a horrendously expensive system to buy, but down-time on a huge paper machine is far more expensive. When you're making a continuous sheet of sized, coated, and gloss-calendered paper 25' wide at a speed of 35 mph, that's a LOT of money winding up at the reel. Our paper was used in very high-quality applications, like fashion magazines where every color in every ad and article has to be exactly right. The heavier grades of our paper was also used for Playboy centerfolds for a while.

Well done!!!

Great pictures and interesting story. Thanks for both!

Don't know how I missed these til now but the last one is especially impressive!

I missed this one also.....beautiful work, Greg.