Electrical Slip Rings by DEUBLIN

By OEM Update Editorial December 15, 2021 4:51 pm

Electric slip rings enable the transmission of power and data currents from a stationary component to a rotating one, therefore they are often also called Electric rotary joints. Very often slip rings are used in rotary machines. These are used by fillers cappers and weighers of food, beverage, household products or pharmaceuticals, but also for packaging building materials such as cement or similar. Many other machines, such as labelling systems, are also suitable for these applications. Slip rings are increasingly important as rotary packaging machines and lines become more and more complex with regard to automation, process visualisation, analogue or digital sensor data, status conditions and power currents as well as system networking. In addition, two aspects increase the amount of data: On the one hand, the specifications for serialisation and traceability throughout the entire production process right into the supply chain. Secondly, the task of making the plants ready for Industrial IOT and Industry 4.0.

Therefore, higher data transfer rates at high bandwidths and the control of fast data protocols such as Ethernet are required. This can be achieved for existing packaging systems by upgrading with suitable slip rings or directly during the design of new packaging machines, systems, or entire lines. However, the solution to these tasks for the packaging sector is not simply the question of, “I‘ll just install a slip ring there“. The issue is far more complex than that. Different factors from the application are incorporated in order to find the suitable, high-quality and, above all, sustainable components: Influencing are e.g. the HF shielding, the processing of mixed signals, contact resistance as well as operating temperature, environmentconditions regarding IP protection class and vibration. And additionally, the transfer of other physical media, such as air or water,as well as restrictions in the installation space also play a major role. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is one of the biggestchallenges with high bandwidth. Ethernet signals and current must be transmitted via the slip rings when they are networkedwith the Internet. These signals can react very sensitively to external electrical interference. Moreover, to maximise dataintegrity, the electrical brush noise must be considered – an index for the contact resistance of each electrical channel when theslip ring rotates. Brush noise, EMI and debris within the slip ring can all affect the quality of data signal transmission, measuredin lost packets per million, and this area of high-quality data transmission is where the new DEUBLIN product really excels.

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