Abstract
Abstract. This article provides insight into the development of a powerful and low-cost chopper amplifier for piezoelectric pressure sensors and shows its possible applications for injection moulding machines. With a power supply of 3.3 volts and the use of standard components, a circuit is introduced which can be connected to a commercially available microcontroller without any additional effort. This amplifier is specialised for low frequencies and high-pressure environments. With the adjustment of the sample and chopper frequency by means of software, the amplifier can easily be adapted for other applications. This chopper amplifier is a very compact and cost-effective solution with a small number of required components. In this contribution, it will be shown that the amplifier has good results in various laboratory tests as well as in the production process. Furthermore, an approach to fuse data from force and pressure signals by using a Kalman filter will be presented. With this method, the quality of the sensor signals can be significantly improved. This article is an extension of our previous work in Schneider et al. (2016b).
Highlights
Two key factors for the pricing of injection-moulded articles are the consistent quality of the production and the production volume
The red curve is the result of the combined sensor signals with the Kalman filter
The amplifier can be used with only one cable connection to the piezoelectric sensor
Summary
Two key factors for the pricing of injection-moulded articles are the consistent quality of the production and the production volume. Production parameters are recorded and evaluated by means of machine-specific hardware outside the injection mould. The measured data are available for the machine or the SCADA1. This requires that all machines are equipped with special hardware and that the company has the necessary infrastructure available at the plant. Current systems keep the parameterisation data for the production process in memory located inside the control unit of the moulding machine or on compact discs. In the case of location changes, e.g. installation by the tool manufacturer at the manufacturing site or a change in the manufacturing plant, the tuned injection moulding parameters are often lost. One possible solution could be the use of an online data management system, but this causes a lot of other problems with data security, violating intellectual property or company espionage
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