Integrated adaptive interface design system development of the magnetic separator considering the shapes of the hopper for a powder line

Abstract

Foreign metal removal is a key process of quality control in the food and pharmaceutical industries and can possibly be achieved using a magnet separator. Typically, magnetic separators are installed at existing production facilities by remodeling because they have the ability to deal with the problems that arise in production facilities. However, when measuring for remodeling, problems such as measurement error, forgotten measurements, change in location, detail proposal changes, or impossibility to measure occur because of complex, distorted or dented shapes, dimensional inaccuracy, and the surroundings. Additionally, the magnet separators designed to fit an existing production have problems in that the dimensions differ from those of the existing facilities, and deficiency is expected in the performance. To solve these problems using a non-conventional method, we developed an adaptive interface design system that combines high accuracy measurement by means of 3D scan to reproduce the existing production facilities as distorted shape and dented shape by reverse engineering, and the optimized finite element method analysis for magnet field to satisfy an expected performance of the surface flux density, and inspect the shape of the design, dimensions, and performance, using computer aided engineering.