fastening & assembly solutions and technology - Approved Business

FAST OCTOBER 2011
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Resin mixing is the key to performance filters success
Airwaves Racing’s Mat Jackson relies on performance filters from Pipercross
Pipercross designs and manufactures
air, oil and fuel filters for
bus, truck and train as well as
high performance competition
cars and super bikes. They are at
the forefront of air filter technology
with over 28 years of
developing for road and race
applications.
A fundamental
requirement in filter
manufacture is to bond and seal
the top and bottom of the element
To continue to improve its
product, Pipercross realised it
needed to update and improve its
resin mixing capability and investigated
what options were available.
The fundamental requirement
is to bond and seal the top
and bottom of the filter element,
to achieve this Pipercross needs
accurately to meter and mix a
two-component Greenfield
Polymer polyur-ethane and dispense
into a rectangular or square
mould. After its deliberations, the
company approached Liquid
Control to assist with the resin
dispensing technology.
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Accuracy of quantity dispensed
is important to the quality
of the filter; if there is too much
resin, even by a small percentage,
the effectiveness of the filter
is reduced because the excess
resin is extruded into the filtering
area. If there is too little resin, the
filter would leak and be rejected.
Also crucial to the quality of the
filter is the repeatable viscosity
of the mixed resin, a function of
accurate ratio metering and temperature
both constantly monitored,
the ratio by flow monitors
enabling a closed loop self-correcting
system. If the viscosity
did vary then the ‘wicking’ capability
would change, again reducing
the performance of the filter.
Liquid Control equipment
enables improved air filter design
due to Pipercross being able to
accurately refine dispensed quantity
and quality.
The process of manufacture is
to place the base filter mould on
the Liquid Control XY Cartesian
robot, manual initiation will start
the Liquid Control DXE60 resin
mixing machine and XY with the
resin mixing head on the robot it
will dispense automatically
around the profile of the mould
within a fraction of a millimetre
ensuring accurate placement of
resin for when the filter element
is placed in the mould. The
mould with filter element in
place is now put on a temperature
controlled carousel allowing the
polyurethane to cure. When this
process is complete the top filter
mould is placed on the XY robot
and the dispense process repeated,
the half pre-assembled filter
is now placed into the top mould
and again allowed to cure, this
then results in an assembly with a
filter element moulded with a
polyurethane moulding to top
and base.
“Because of the programmable
dispensing precision
of the Liquid Control Posiflow
DXE60, we are able to refine and
improve the quality of our filters
and save money because of the
50% reduced reject rate which
was an unexpected bonus, if you
Accuracy of quantity of resin
dispensed is important to the
quality of the filter
also take into account the 40%
increase in production due to
increased speed and importantly
improved reliability we are a very
happy Liquid Control customer,”
commented Adam
Hughes, Design
Engineer with
Pipercross.
LIQUID CONTROL
01933 277571
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