Extrusion International 6-2018

46 Extrusion International 6/2018 MIA AWARD 2018 Award winning plastic innovations motan innovation award ceremony during Fakuma exhibition The mia jury, a panel of four experts from universities and institutes in the field of plastics research, had short-listed six ideas, as finalists for the award in July after intensive evaluation. The three winning pro- jects were particularly convincing in terms of innovation level, relevance for the practice in the plastics indus- try as well as feasibility and market opportunities, and prevailed over the other contenders. Gravimetric suction box gives Reinhard Herro first place The gravimetric suction box devel- oped by Reinhard Herro is a new sys- tem for throughput detection with batch traceability for pneumatic conveying systems. It measures all material throughputs directly at the material source and thus replaces the usual measuring procedure at the consuming unit typically a ma- terial loader. By means of a gravi- metric dispenser integrated in the suction box, each batch of material The winners have been confirmed: Three new ideas in the field of raw materials handling were awarded with the motan innovation award (mia) on 18th October 2018. The technology company motan runs the competition every two years to promote ideas and innovations that are too good to be forgotten Sandra Füllsack and Carl Litherland (CMO motan holding gmbh, right outside) with the winners and jury members. From the left: Philipp Mählmeyer (2nd place), Reinhard Herro (First place), Bernd Michael (3rd place), Karl Miller (motan-colortronic Ltd. , Great Britain), Prof. Dr. Martin Bastian (SKZ Würzburg, Germany), Dr.-Ing. Peter Faatz (Process development for plastics technology, INA Werk Schaeffler) is weighed individually before con- veying and then automatically as- signed to the designated machine. With only one measuring system it is now possible to measure and control the material throughputs of many consuming units. In addition, the gravimetric suction box opens up completely new possibilities for the control and monitoring of pneu- matic conveying systems, as many processes are automated. For ex- ample, the optimum filling quantity for material loaders is automatically generated and overfilling is prevent- ed. The jury also acknowledged that the increase in the degree of auto- mation was accompanied by an in- crease in the reliability of the plants. Reinhard Herro receives a prize of 10,000 euros for his innovative idea. Philipp Mählmeyer achieves second place with his developed app To be able to optimally serve large complex industrial plants requires a quick and precise retrieval of the current status information. The new app by Philipp Mählmeyer starts at this point: using clear, machine- readable codes (QR codes), which are attached to the aggregates, they visualize the required data on a mo- bile device. Thus, each operator can not only query status information easily, but also control the associ- ated processes. For example, using a mobile device, mechanical adjust-