First Fully Automated Gasket Sheet Finishing System

With its new finishing station, Gumpoldskirchen-based KLINGER Dichtungstechnik has taken an important step towards making its production of gasket sheets more sustainable and efficient. The fully automated system, which the company designed and built in-house, handles the entire process, from feeding in the sheets, trimming and cutting them to length, applying print and palletizing – all with automated quality control.

The background

To drive innovation, a new calender was needed.

Since the existing aperture was unable to handle this sheet size, the company invested its own expertise in the Gumpoldskirchen site.

Fully automated finishing

“This consists of trimming the side edges, cutting the sheeting to the customer-specified lengths, applying the product logo, quality control including automatic reject detection, and palletizing.” An interface to the SCADA system provides all parameters and process data in real time, allowing seamless process monitoring and providing traceability of each individual production order.

Only the packaging is still done by hand, as this involves compliance with a score of different regulations, depending on customer requirements. Even though, the entire production process has been speeded up considerably, with the cycle time cut from 40 to 25 seconds and the production rate increased from 80 to 130 sheets per hour.

Step by step to the finished sheet

Sheet carriage positioning: The system recognizes the carriage, lifts it with four screw jacks and precisely aligns the top gasket sheet.

Air-cushioned draw-in: A suction gripper lifts the sheet as air is blown in underneath the sheet, so that the material slides easily into the infeed roller.

Trimming: Circular knives at the sides cut off protruding edges. The waste is shredded and fed back into the production process to minimize waste.

Camera check: The sheet passes through the AI camera system, which detects any defects and decides in real time whether it is conforming or not. 

Printing: The product logo is applied to the underside of the sealing sheet with a 15 kg roller using a flexographic printing process.

Cutting to length: An impact shear cuts the sheet to its final dimensions, as specified in the order.

Palletizing: Gripper arms stack conforming sheets on the pallet and place any rejects on a separate pile.

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Key technical data at a glance

The new aperture has a conveying speed of up to 60 m/min and can process sealing sheets up to 2 meters wide and 4.5 meters long (thus, also American inch formats). The system is equipped with 39 servomotors with a combined power of around 100 kW. In eight-hour shifts, around 3000 tonnes of sealing material can be processed annually, increasing to 4500 tonnes in twelve-hour shifts.

Arben Gashi, head programmer at KLINGER Dichtungstechnik, has brought the system to life. He wrote the system’s PLC program, which coordinates the axes, motors and handling systems. The construction itself was a complex undertaking: It involved laying a total of 2.5 kilometers of cabling, and the design documents included 520 technical drawings and 350 pages of circuit diagram. The system was engineered and built entirely in-house from 25,000 individual parts – a formidable achievement for a company whose core competencies does not include plant engineering.

AI vision system: the heart of QA

A key feature of the new system is the AI-supported vision system. Developed by Johannes Frohnwieser, who is in charge of process optimization at KLINGER Dichtungstechnik, and Victor Wenin, project support specialist for AI applications, the vision system relies on so-called convolutional neural networks (CNN) and is based on the open source solution YOLOv11 (You Only Look Once). Deep learning algorithms ensure that the system constantly learns and improved. Johannes says, “we wanted to capture a width of 2000 millimeters at a speed of 60 meters per minute and a resolution of less than 0.1 millimeters per pixel.” 

The three high-performance line scan cameras on each side of the sheet have a resolution of 8K. They produce a line scan of each sheet, which is made up of around 450,000 image lines for each side of the sheet. The AI reliably detects common faults, such as creases. “Thanks to neural networks, we can dispense with complex lighting, as the system independently ‘cancels out’ the sheets’ subtle surface pattern. This allowed us to reduce the investment in lighting from 22,000 to 1000 euros,” says Johannes.

Focus on performance and QA

Thanks to the system’s high level of automation, it only takes one person now to monitor it. With the old finishing process, by comparison, the production time was longer and we needed more personnel. The packaging and some ancillary activities are still done by hand. But despite this, overall output has seen a marked increase.

Efficiency and innovation in harmony

The bought-in parts used include servo components from Siemens and safety systems from Pilz. With this decision, KLINGER Dichtungstechnik has laid the foundation for more independence, customized solutions and long-term cost efficiency – and the result is convincing from both an engineering and an economic perspective.