E-Archive
VOL. 25 July ISSUE YEAR 2024
Interview
in Vol. 25 - July Issue - Year 2024
Talking About Revolutions: When Blast Wheel Innovation Goes Global
Stanislav Venclik looks after Wheelabrator's global wheel portfolio
Wheelabrator's ATLAS wheel family, formerly known as "Universal"
Wheelabrator's EZX wheels, an evolution of the popular EZEFIT design
The TITAN wheel family is known for its exceptional durability - due to tool steel wear parts
The epicentre of global wheel innovation: the global technology centre Wheel in Metelen, Germany
Invented 130 years ago and having its breakthrough in the 1930s, the blast wheel remains at the heart of many shot-blast processes. Despite their self-destructive tendencies, blast wheels often stay on machines for decades. It’s easy to assume that innovation moves at a snail’s pace, if the equipment buying cycle is so long. And how much innovation can happen on such a seemingly simple piece of kit anyway? A lot, according to Stanislav Venclik, who has been in charge of the blast wheel portfolio at Wheelabrator for nearly a decade, with an increasingly global scope. Today, Wheelabrator’s core wheel portfolio is globally recognized by default. We talk to Stanislav about the importance of wheel innovation, the hidden risks of outdated wheel tech, and how the trusted wheel can still be reinvented every day.
(?) MFN: Stanislav, you have just gone through a long portfolio review to reduce the number of wheel types and variations you offer, including many legacy brand wheels. Doesn’t that reduce choice for customers?
(!) S. V.: You might think that, but it’s a false logic. We’ve found that from an engineering perspective, a smaller and perfectly formed portfolio can meet any customer need, while also ensuring our R&D reaches and benefits every customer. We want to provide our customers with access to the very best and latest science and innovation.
Dozens of different wheel types can’t all be the best. We’ve taken a methodical approach to our portfolio and questioned everything. The result are three major wheel families that we constantly invest in, that are continuously improved: TITAN, ATLAS and EZX.
It’s only human to stick with what we know, but as engineers, we go for the most elegant and effective solution that delivers the best, most economical results for our customers. And we can evidence this through testing. While it’s always easier to just give people a like-for-like replacement when they ask for it, it will leave them stuck in the past. We want our customers to operate at their peak and not fall behind competitors because they’re running on outdated technology at a higher running cost.
(?) MFN: Would you say that’s the hidden risk in keeping legacy wheels going?
(!) S. V.: Absolutely. At Wheelabrator, it’s our instinct to support and look after decades old equipment with or without our name on it. That’s a good thing. The exciting challenge is to bring innovation to those machines. Wheels are the key to that.
You can’t underestimate how much the wheel determines the performance of a shot-blast process – not just in blast results, but also in energy use, abrasive consumption, wear behaviour, maintenance cost. If a wheel is 20 years old and hasn’t been upgraded, there will be significant differences in running cost and performance compared to a state-of-the-art wheel. And it’s an incredibly cost-effective upgrade to perform, that could give you the performance of a new machine, accomplish more with less or even adapt the machine to new requirements.
(?) MFN: We mentioned earlier your global approach to innovation, a wheel portfolio that is global by default. What’s the customer benefit of that approach?
(!) S. V.: The benefit to our customers is that our global wheel portfolio is constantly improved based on learnings from our installed base and from a vast number of customer tests around the world. There’s a cross-pollination of ideas, which means that innovations are carried across the different wheel families and the differences that are there between wheel designs are not about regional differences but about what works best for the application.
We sometimes see patterns evolve in regional preferences that are based around what people are used to seeing or what they’ve been trained on. And that’s fine, but we never want to be in a position that we can’t offer someone a wheel that is better for them based on their location. An example is the dominance of direct-drive wheels in North America, which can seem fixed, but is quite a recent development. Belt-driven wheels were quite common 30/40 years ago. And they still have their uses (which is why we’ve got them in our portfolio). As a technology leader, we want the customer to make an informed choice – and get the best technology for their circumstances. It’s down to us to show them the options, help them weigh up the technical, practical and economic aspects of each option and find the most suitable fit.
(?) MFN: What are the main characteristics that separate the wheel families?
(!) S. V.: The typology is not 100% strict, but in broad terms, the families are combinations of direct drive versus belt-driven and tool steel versus cast parts across a wide range of motor powers. We’ve left enough room for variations within those that we can offer quite specific wheels while still being able to get new innovations rolled out across wheel designs quickly.
(?) MFN: What are the main areas of wheel technology that your R&D is focused on? Is there really that much room for improvement?
(!) S. V.: There is still a lot of room for improvement in the wheel. The closer we look, the more complex it becomes. There are so many interactions and interdependencies within the wheel. Understanding and controlling that fully is a science. Plus, our customers’ main drivers change over time. Energy prices go up, and energy efficiency become important. Sustainability moves up the agenda, demand increases for emission tracking. There’s a labour shortage; minimal maintenance moves into the spotlight. Integrated lines become more common; predictability and continuous running becomes paramount.
Some of the areas of research and improvement we’re looking at all the time are wear, energy use and speed of maintenance. How can we wear-optimise parts and offer the best selection of wear part materials to suit different requirements. For example, we have wheels with tool steel parts that are incredibly durable, but we’re also always looking at making other materials more durable too. Sometimes it’s not the material alone, it’s the casting or machining process or the heat treatment that makes the difference. This is where our testing capabilities come in. We’ve got a fantastic test centre in Germany, with a materials lab attached. It allows us to challenge assumptions and let evidence guide our developments.
And of course, wear is not just determined by the quality of the wear parts. Sometimes you see curious wear patterns that are caused by a small design feature in the core wheel assembly. Because we have global R&D resources, we can get to the bottom of what’s going on.
Ease of maintenance is another major focus. It can make a huge difference to customers, if the wheels are designed in a way that one maintenance person can take them apart really quickly and reassemble them without room for error. Those are things we design into our wheels all the time.
(?) MFN: Apart from running tests, what other tools do you use in R&D to improve the wheel?
(!) S. V.: There have been a lot of developments over the last decade. We’ve looked inside the wheel with high-speed cameras, and we’re increasingly using laboratory work to get under skin of parts. But the biggest step change in just how much of the blast process we can track and see comes from digital process monitoring. There’s just so much more data available. And the range of digital tools and sensors is growing all the time. Not least thanks to our own digital team at Monitizer. One by one, they’re removing the various remaining ‘black boxes’ in and around the shot blast process. Whether that’s real-time abrasive monitoring, which could be a game-changer for peening, or simply a holistic view of machine behaviour over time that can give us important insights. Of course, the main reason behind the tools is to improve our customers’ processes and save them money. However, they also fuel our R&D.
(?) MFN: Is wheel-blasting becoming much more of a high-tech process?
(!) S. V.: I think most readers of MFN will say it already is. If we’re looking at peening or surface preparation for coating, the demands on the process are already very high. Our goal here is to offer maximum consistency over ever longer periods – ultimate process stability. That’s achieved through predictable wear behaviour, the right wheel match, process fine-tuning, and through some of the new digital innovations that are already available or in the pipeline. We want to put shot-peeners in complete control of their process, so they can see in real-time if it’s drifting and can intervene.
But even in applications that are not considered “high-tech” - cleaning in foundries, occasional blasting in fabrication shops – there are always new challenges and ways to push the technology. For starters some castings have changed considerably over the last 10/15 years – the blast process must adapt to the challenges that come with that. Foundry lines are getting more digitalised and integrated, so there’s an expectation that shot-blast equipment keeps up with that, delivering data points, offering opportunities to correct and control. In fabrication shops, the challenge may be that a machine needs to deliver maximum versatility, but perhaps also a high degree of automation, due to shortages of skilled labour.
For me, wheel-blasting will always be a high-tech process. It’s our job to ensure the “high-tech” aspect is invisible, built into the equipment, so it just seamlessly happens, rather than putting a burden on the operator. That’s the real engineering challenge!
(?) MFN: Stanislav – thank you for your time!
Wheelabrator Group GmbH
Industriestraße 55
48629 Metelen, Germany
Tel. +49.2556.880
E-mail: kontakt@wheelabratorgroup.de