The concept of automatic generation of hydraulic press cycle

The development of smart hydraulic press that allows rapid adaptation to high-volume variant production is a major challenge. Besides tool management, setting the control parameters, which can be considered as a correct press cycle, is an important part to achieve agile production. This paper presents a new approach to automatically generate a hydraulic press cycle where the important data of the production plan is known, such as the data or setting of the forming tool and the data of the product. In this case, RFID tracking system is used to read the tool/product data, which is input data for the mathematical algorithm for calculating the characteristic points of the hydraulic press cycle. The characteristic points are sent to the local PLC and stored as a matrix. The Beckhoff TwinCat platform is used for process control. Finally, a simple bending process is shown as a use case for concept verification.

Characteristics of Bamboo Particleboard Bonded with Citric Acid-Starch Using Three-Step Press Cycle Method

In an attempt to reduce the use of a formaldehyde-based adhesive that is dangerous for both human health and environment, several studies had been done to develop particleboard with natural bio-based adhesives. Between those bio-based adhesives that have been investigated, the combination of citric acid-starch was potential to be developed further as an adhesive to particleboard. In this research, the effect of starch addition and press temperature on the properties of bamboo particleboard were evaluated. This research uses a combination of citric acid/starch with the composition weight ratio of 100/0, 90/10, 80/20 and 70/30 and press temperature of 160, 180 and 200 °C. The manufacture of particleboard also used a three-step press cycle method which has not been done before in Petung bamboo particleboard production. The result showed that the three-press cycle method used in this research was able to produce a board with excellent properties than board produced by single-step press cycle method. This showed that the manufacture of the board in this research was more efficient to produce citric acid-starch bonded particleboard than previous method being used. The results also showed that both the addition of starch and the increase of press temperature especially improved bamboo particleboard mechanical properties. The board with the optimum properties resulted from particleboard with citric acid/starch adhesive with the composition weight ratio of 80/20 and press temperature of 180 °C which could meet JIS A 5908 (2003) type 18 requirement.