Card feeder FRS-P and VQC card. © DiloGroup

This year, DiloGroup, a leading equipment supplier of complete lines for staple fibre nonwoven fabric production, has presented a fully functional needling line on a booth space of ca. 1.150 m² at the ITMA 2019 exhibition that closed its doors in Barcelona this week.

With its exciting exhibit, the company wanted to highlight the importance of the European ITMA show in regard to new developments and machines, which represent the state of the art. “It is also an indicator for the importance of needle felting technology as a whole which is, according to the annual production weight, the most important webforming and consolidation process for staple fibres,” the company reports.

“By large investments in research and development, DiloGroup contributes significantly to the exploitation of new applications based on increase in production capacity, improvement of quality features and increased efficiency in the production process. At ITMA in Barcelona we set a new focus on the further development alongside existing well-known technical components.”

FC II and 3D-lofter. © DiloGroup

At the show, the manufacturer highlighted the efficient fibre preparation with I4.0 modules – with further developments and modifications to improve operation of the bale opener (fast fibre changeover), carding willow and fibre dosing.

Another highlight was the universal card feeder UniFeed with fine opening stage. The UniFeed vibration chute principle includes components for a precise fibre distribution in cross and longitudinal direction and requires low space in width and height including the fine opening stage. The cross profile of the web mat before the card is designed to ensure a precise matching of the edges in the longitudinal profile of the crosslaid web.

The card was followed by the high-speed crosslapper HyperLayer NT with precision laydown technology. “The precision of the laydown even at high speed up to about 190 m/min. and a layering width of about 4 m makes this extraordinary machine very suited for use in hydroentanglement lines,” the company reports.

A high speed crosslapper needs aprons to compensate for speed differences between cross apron of the lapper and constant infeed of the needleloom. This high-frequency start-stopadjustment is realised by Dilo’s new FC-II apron with double arrangement.

DiloGroup showed several development modules to illustrate the future potential degree of automisation in nonwoven production. © DiloGroup

A series of individual web forming units, which operate according to the aerodynamic web forming principle, showed how fibre masses can be placed with 3D topology on a base web so that the correct amount of fibre is placed at the positions where in technical parts, such as automotive, stretch and strain concentration can be expected. This 3D-Lofter technology can also be used “inversely” to fill in thin areas in web mats before the card, especially when these are fed to “direct cards” without crosslapper or aerodynamic web forming unit.

Also featured was Hyperpunch. A new and more simple realisation of the kinematic needle beam movement for reducing detrimental draft and increasing the throughput speed makes the current elaborate Hyperpunch technology also interesting for universal use.

DiloGroup also showed at ITMA several development modules to illustrate the future
potential degree of automisation in nonwoven production. “The I4.0 modules are meant to
facilitate operation and to improve data transparency in production, operation control, quality and maintenance,” the manufacturer reports. The solutions offered by Dilo, Bale Timer, Smart Start for a fully automatic starting aid or Di-Lowatt for energy savings, are supplemented by Siemens based solutions which can be chosen via app and data Cloud MindSphere.

www.dilo.de