Utveckling av nytt koncept till processmaskin
Metso Paper offers a front-running range of solutions and services for the pulp and paper industry. At the baling unit, design solutions are developed for manufacturing and handling of pulp bales. The machines are continuously developed to satisfy customer needs. One big step in the development of the baling line was to remove hydraulics from the machines and replace it with electrical motors and pneumatics. This was not done on the folding machine which is still driven by mainly hydraulics. The focus for this thesis work has primarily been to develop a new folding machine concept that is not driven by hydraulic power. It was also desired to make the new machine faster, cheaper and better than the existing machine. The work has been carried out in accordance with a product development method called Participatory Product Innovation, P2I. The method gives a guideline to the phases that should be carried out in a product development project. The first phase contains clarification of the customer?s needs, which is done by interviewing customers and Metso staff. An analysis of the market has been carried out as well as a study on related technology. The gained information was used to define the scope of the problem, establish a mission statement and to create a list of product characteristics. The concept design phase is divided into concept generation, concept evaluation and concept selection. These three steps were iterated until a final concept was selected. The result of the project is a folding machine driven by both electric motors and pneumatic drives. The different motions are suspended on linear guidance. The machine has a shorter working cycle than the existing machine, it is cheaper, more reliable and probably folds the wrapping paper better. This is done by applying an electrically driven turn table, bale stoppers and optimization of the folding arm motions.