| Many
types of products are manufactured by blending together a number of different
ingredients. Each ingredient may be in a different type of condition, such as
powders, pellets, liquids, or others. Other than liquids, it is very
difficult to meter out the correct amount of each ingredient by volume,
because its volume may be affected by temperature, humidity, and the amount
of material in the dispensing container. Powders can be easily compacted in
storage. The best choice is to use weight to meter ingredients for
blending. Because each product blended has different requirements, the blending equipment must also be designed differently. A liquid mixing system is completely different from one that combines different powders and chemicals, such as a blender for plastic injection molding. Arlyn Scales designs and manufactures blending equipment customized for the specific application. All industrial blenders that uses the weight of the ingredients for metering purposes will include many of the same components as will be found in industrial scales. These include load cells as the weight transducer, a user interface for the input of parameters and viewing the data, and a controller to convert the load cell signals into weights, and to open and close the devices that feed each ingredient into the mixing area. Each of these components will generally need customization to match the specifications of the blending situation. Besides the primary responsibility of precision metering of ingredients, the controller may also need to store large amounts of data for later analysis. This can occur in a flash memory stick for later downloading into a computer system, or may include a USB data output port for direct connection in real time to the computer. Another interesting alternative is an Ethernet connection into the Internet. This provides real time monitoring and data analysis of blenders from any Internet connected remote location. |