Comerio Ercole team starts up calendering line 10,000km away

Busto Arsizio, Italy –  Engineers at Comerio Ercole have employed remote monitoring technology to commission a rubber calendering line at a customer facility 10,000 away from their Busto Arsizio base. 

The project was led from the machinery maker’s site in Varese, northern Italy to enhance safety on the start-up of the calendering line for an unnamed company in the Far East, said a Comerio Ercole release.

The commissioning, it explained, took place at the height of the Covid pandemic in May and centred on a dual-purpose fabric and steel-cord line with four-roll, fully hydraulic calender.

The Italian control-room team ensured that the start-up of the complete line, featuring a 610x1800mm, S-shape configuration calender, went ‘really smoothly’ without any risks for operators or machines.

To maximise safety, Comerio Ercole installed a series of video cameras around the unit to transmit images ‘at the push of a button,’ added the press statement.

Key to the project, it said, was the selection of a small crew of operators “in which everyone mutually understood each other” and had a clear, common a view of the schedule. 

Other essential steps involved the creation of a safe and stable VPN connection between parties to ensure that all information was processed with interruptions. 

Having completed tests on all emergency devices, signals and I/Os, the team fine-tuned the motor settings before initiating start-up of the machine rolls and material production.

The Sept/Oct issue of European Rubber Journal magazine will include a special report on the adoption of remote monitoring and control technologies in the rubber and tire industries.