D-Glaze by Smac

To maintain consistent colour tones, it is very important to constantly control the base glaze applied prior to digital decoration. Until now this was done using empirical methods, often based solely on the experience and manual skill of the line operators.

To overcome these problems, Smac has launched D-Glaze, an automatic system designed to control ceramic suspensions in an aqueous base (glazes) which have to be diluted and brought to a specific density before being used in a glazing machine.

Ideal for the preparation and feeding of base glazes for subsequent decoration with digital inkjet printers, D-Glaze ensures that the desired amount of product is available at all times and keeps the density constant thanks to continuous-cycle automatic control devices with automatic recirculation.

The machine is designed to adapt to existing glazing line equipment, making it unnecessary to adopt other equipment designed specifically for the device. D-Glaze can control up to two dosing pumps to feed chemical additives or colouring bases. It is wheel-mounted to facilitate movement and is electronically controlled by a PLC and colour touch-screen.

At the beginning of the cycle, the machine fills the tank with the glaze requiring dilution, taking it from the storage container by means of the dedicated pump. At the end of the filling procedure, the system begins diluting the product with water by means of suitable addition/mixing cycles until the density set by the operator is reached. The product is now ready to be sent to the user machine’s feeding tank.

A level sensor installed on the tank monitors the quantity of product contained. When it falls below the minimum quantity, D-Glaze automatically sends glaze at the correct density until the maximum set quantity is reached.

The glaze inside the tank is kept constantly under control by the electronic densimeter and suitably corrected if the density falls outside the set tolerance range. The cycle continues this way until the tank is completely emptied, after which it restarts from the beginning.

The advantages of D-Glaze include:

• Full automation of glaze feeding to the glazing machines and drastic reduction in stoppages, thus increasing productivity and reducing waste.
• Real-time monitoring of the density of the glaze sent to the glazing machine and complete automation of density correction with consequent elimination of human errors in the procedure.
• Elimination of glaze wastage and colour variations, resulting in considerable savings of time and money.
• Elimination of delays due to manual glaze preparation times and increase in finished product quality thanks to continuous electronic control.