Patent Application
20090188643
The present invention relates to a creping blade having improved resistance to edge chipping and improved performance with respect to problems associated with edge chipping. The invention also relates to a method for manufacturing such a blade.
Creping blades are commonly used in the paper industry for production of tissue. In order to produce the typical bulk characterizing creped tissue, a creping blade is normally used for detaching a paper web from a rigid, hot dryer cylinder (often known as a Yankee dryer) and at the same time exert a compressive action on the paper web.
In this context, there are a number of properties which are desired for the creping blades. The creping blade should be able to overcome the adhesive forces which stick the paper web to the dryer surface. At the same time, the blade should create the desired crepe structure in order to provide the right bulk, softness and mechanical strength to the tissue. For this purpose, the geometry of the blade tip plays an important role. For example, a square edge blade (i.e. 90 degrees bevel) in any given creping situation will create a different tissue than a blade having a sharp edge of, say, 75 degrees bevel under otherwise similar conditions. The square edge blade would, in this example, provide a higher bulk and a coarser crepe structure than the 75 degrees blade.
In addition, and not less importantly, the blade should be able keep the tissue parameters as constant as possible for the longest possible period of time, in order to produce tissue of substantially constant quality. Wear and other damages to the blade tip are therefore important factors determining the quality of the final tissue product, as well as the service life of the blade.
Creping blades are subjected to wear for a number of reasons. For example, there will be sliding wear against the dryer, and there will be impact wear on the blade due to the paper web hitting the blade during creping. It has been found that the progressive wear of the creping blade is directly related to unwanted evolution of the tissue properties, such as changes in bulk or softness. In practice, optimal properties are obtained only with a newly installed blade.
In order to accommodate for the wear of the creping blade, tissue manufacturers are typically specifying ranges of properties which are deemed to be acceptable. Nevertheless, it would be highly appreciated in the tissue industry if the quality obtained during the initial time after a blade change could be maintained for a prolonged period of time.
One type of damage occurring in creping blades is chipping at the working edge of the blade. By chipping, it is meant that small chips of blade material at the blade edge are torn off during creping. Chipping is typically a limiting factor for blades having a hard-covered edge, such as an edge covered with a ceramic, a carbide, a cermet or some other hard, wear-resistant material. If they are relatively small, such chips at the blade edge are responsible for defects sometimes referred to as lines or “tramlines”. For larger chips, or for lower grammage of tissue, such chips may cause web breaks and holes in the tissue, with a considerable loss in productivity as the result.
In order to reduce such chipping at the blade edge, it has previously been proposed to provide the blade with a thermally sprayed top layer that forms a working edge, a sliding wear area and a web impact area, wherein the top layer comprises both chromia and titania (see WO2005/023533).
However, a more general solution to the above-referenced chipping issue is still sought. In particular, it would be highly advantageous if a solution to the chipping issue could be provided that is largely independent of particular material selections.
The present invention is based upon an understanding of the underlying reasons for edge chipping in creping blades. A general idea behind the present invention is that if the edge of the creping blade, and more particularly the working apex thereof, is kept substantially free from crack defects or any kind of small defects that may initiate chipping, the blade tip will better resist stress, sliding wear and mechanical impact during creping.
The “working apex” of a creping blade is meant to denote the intersection or region formed between the sliding surface and the web impact surface of the blade.
The conventional design of a high performing creping blade is typically characterized by a prebevel at the blade tip of up to 10 degrees, and a wear-resistant material is applied to the prebeveled surface and/or the top surface. (web impact area) of the blade. When the blade is loaded against the dryer, the blade will experience stress which in turn may cause micro-cracks or other crack defects in the wear-resistant blade covering. During creping, such cracks may lead to or promote chipping and the associated problems identified in the introduction above. Similar micro-cracks in the wear-resistant covering may also develop during manufacture, handling, packaging and distribution of the blades, where blade strips are often coiled for practical reasons.
Therefore, it is proposed according to the present invention to provide the creping blade with a sliding surface and a web impact surface designed such that the working apex of the blade is located at or close to the neutral fiber (or plane) of the blade.
As generally known to those of ordinary skill in the art, the “neutral fiber” of a beam-like structure (such as a blade) is the line or plane at which the structure is in an unstrained or unstressed state under a deflection load. For a deflected beam, material located on one side of the neutral fiber will experience a compressive stress, while material located on the other side of the neutral fiber will experience a tensile stress (see
It has been found that the advantageous effect of having the working apex of the blade located at or close to the neutral fiber is significant when the working apex is located no more than 30 percent of the total blade thickness away from the neutral fiber of the blade. Preferably, the working apex is located no more than 20 percent of the total blade thickness away from the neutral fiber, even more preferably no more than 10 percent of the total blade thickness away from the neutral fiber. In the optimal case, from a crack reduction point of view, the working apex of the blade is located substantially at the neutral fiber of the blade. In this context, it should be understood that the location of the working apex relative to the neutral fiber of the blade is determined as the shortest geometrical distance from the working apex to the geometrical plane of the neutral fiber, i.e. measured parallel to the blade thickness (see
It will be understood that virtually any prebevel angle could be used for locating the working apex at or close to the neutral fiber of the blade. However, in order for the neutral fiber to be sufficiently well defined, and in order to facilitate deposition of the wear-resistant covering at the blade edge, it is preferred to have a prebevel angle larger than what is conventional, such that any deflection in the prebeveled part of the blade may be neglected. To this end, it is preferred to have a prebevel larger than about 25 degrees, or even larger than about 30 degrees, with respect to the face 110 of the blade substrate.
In embodiments of the present invention, it is also preferred to have a wear-resistant material provided at the blade tip, improving both the sliding wear-resistance against the dryer and the impact wear-resistant in the web impact area of the blade. The comparatively large prebevel mentioned above also facilitates the deposition of the wear-resistant material at the blade tip, as well as any post-grinding or similar of the wear-resistant material for forming the working apex at or close to the neutral fiber of the blade.
A creping blade according to the present invention has proven to possess very attractive properties with respect to wear-resistance, and particularly impact wear-resistance. Another benefit obtained by using the inventive creping blade is the excellent tissue quality consistency for the creped product. The closer the working apex is to the neutral fiber, the more pronounced is the improvement compared to conventional blades.
The inventive concept disclosed herein may be utilized for any type of blades, particularly high performance creping blades. High performance creping blades typically include a wear-resistant material at the blade tip applied by thermal spraying, such as APS plasma spraying or HVOF flame spraying, or by PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) or CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition). The wear-resistant material may include metal oxides, ceramic materials, silicates, carbides, borides, nitrides and mixtures thereof, for example alumina, chromia, zirconia, tungsten carbide, chromium carbide, zirconium carbide, tantalum carbide, titanium carbide and mixtures thereof. The wear-resistant material may alternatively be a cermet.
In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, on which:
In
Contrary to conventional creping blades, the inventive blade 100 preferably has a prebeveled angle (indicated at φ) which is about 25-30 degrees or larger with respect to the blade face 110. On the prebeveled surface of the blade, there is provided a wear-resistant material 38, designed such that the working apex 32 of the blade is located at or close to the neutral fiber 34. As also indicated in
In general, and as indicated in
In a method for manufacturing the inventive creping blade, a prebevel is first provided on a longitudinal edge of a base substrate. A wear-resistant material is then applied on said prebevel. The wear-resistant material applied on the prebevel is then shaped such that it forms a sliding surface for contact with a dryer surface and a web-impact surface upon which a paper web impacts during creping, a working apex being formed between the sliding surface and the web impact surface. The shaping of the wear-resistant material is shaped such that the working apex is located no more than 30 percent of the total blade thickness away from a neutral fiber of the blade. Preferably, the working apex is located no more than 20 percent, more preferably no more than 10 percent, of the total blade thickness away from the neutral fiber of the blade.
Preferably, the prebevel is formed to have an angle of at least 25 degrees with respect to the blade surface.
The wear-resistant material is suitably a ceramic material, a cermet material or a carbide material. For example, the wear-resistant material may be selected from metal oxides, ceramic materials, silicates, carbides, borides, nitrides and mixtures thereof. Particular examples of suitable wear-resistant materials are alumina, chromia, zirconia, tungsten carbide, chromium carbide, zirconium carbide, tantalum carbide, titanium carbide and mixtures thereof.
Preferably, the wear-resistant material is applied by thermal spraying, physical vapor deposition or chemical vapor deposition.
In a tissue mill, trials were performed using three different types of blades. The first type, called Type A, was a standard steel blade used as a reference. The second type, called Type B, was applicant's own prior art blade (test blade designated “Proto-173”), having a thermally sprayed, wear-resistant material applied at the working tip of the blade for protection. The third type, called Type C, was an improved coating blade according to the present invention, using a similar wear-resistant material as for the Type B blade.
The following operating conditions were used in this trial:
A blade of Type A is typically used in current creping facilities, since high performance blades have heretofore often been associated with chipping problems. The working life-time for such blade is on the average about 2-3 hours.
In comparison, a blade of Type B tested on the same machine, normally used with the Type A blades, lasted less than 1 hour before a blade change was required due to line defects appearing on the creped tissue. Over time, there was a tendency for such line defects to increase in number and intensity.
Particularly, it should be noted that damage to the blade tip may occur at comparatively low stress, due to the presence of initial defects, as shown in
For highly wear-resistant materials, chipping is a particular drawback, since highly wear-resistant materials are typically also brittle. Once chipping has occurred at the tip of the blade, the chips defect will remain because there is substantially no sliding wear that could “polish off” or “grind down” those chips defects. On the contrary, an ordinary steel blade (Type A) is considerably less wear-resistant than the high performance blades, but the general high toughness of steel blades leads to less problems related to chipping at the blade tip. Moreover, in case any chipping should occur in a steel blade, the wear of the blade will automatically remove such defects over time.
An inventive blade (Type C) was tested in the same environment as the blades of Types A and B. The inventive blade was run for 25 hours and was thereafter removed from the paper making machine for inspection. When the inventive blade was removed after 25 hours, it still provided a satisfactory creping result.
As a consequence of the predictable wear for the inventive blade, tissue can be manufactured with high quality over a drastically longer time compared to prior art blades.
On another tissue machine, comparative trials were performed using two different types of blades. The first type, called Type D (test blade designated “Proto-C2PGA”), was a prior art ceramic blade based on standard geometry. The second blade, called Type E, was a ceramic blade according to the present invention. Basically, the blade tip geometries differ between the two tested blades, but the protective material (i.e. the wear-resistant material at the tip of the blades) is the same for both blades and applied under the same conditions.
The following operating conditions were used in this trial:
In these trials, the blade of Type D was applicant's prior art, high performance blade. These blades are performing reasonably well, producing the required tissue quality for a sufficient period of time. Nevertheless, the tissue quality does decrease over time, with apparition of lines that eventually become unacceptable.
It has been identified that even very fine cracks in the hard and brittle wear-resistant material at the blade tip may lead to larger cracks and chipping during the service life of the blade. Therefore, avoiding such micro cracks at the blade tip may lead to drastically longer service life for the inventive blades. The blade of Type D according to this example has a conventional design, wherein the blade thickness at the working tip is approximately the same as the overall blade thickness (tip thickness and overall blade thickness approximately 1.2 mm). Consequently, the working apex (i.e. the edge or region formed between the sliding surface and the web impact surface) of the Type D blade is located far away from the neutral fiber of the blade, namely very close to one side of the blade. During manufacturing, handling and packaging, the ceramic edge deposit will thus encounter various kinds of tensile stress, thereby promoting micro cracks at the tip of the blade already before it has been mounted in the paper making machine.
The blade of Type E (according to the present invention) was manufactured in order to position the working apex at close as possible to the neutral fiber of the blade (i.e. typically at the center of the blade thickness). In
Both the sliding surface 30 and the web impact surface 36 are indicated in
Referring back to
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 06117161.7 | Jul 2006 | EP | regional |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/EP2007/006204 | 7/12/2007 | WO | 00 | 2/19/2009 |
