Effective and cost-saving drying of water-cooled insulated cables

As well as manufacturing a standard range of wires and multicores, cable manufacturer Concept Cables offers the ability to manufacture products designed to meet customers' specific requirements.

One of the main problems the company has recently overcome is the removal of the residual moisture film from water-cooled insulated cable products during production. The removal of this moisture film from extruded products proved difficult to achieve and the previously employed compressed air nozzles were inefficient at drying the wire/cables and costly to run, says the company.

ACI's new 'LINE-Dry' System appears to solve this problem whilst at the same time achieving significant savings in energy costs. Compared to the original compressed air systems, it is estimated that ACI's blower-powered wire/cable drying system can give up to a 10-fold reduction in energy cost savings, potentially equates to savings of thousands of pounds per annum, adds the firm.

“Since the installation of ACI's LINE-Dry System product quality has definitely improved”, stated Paul Randall, Production Director of Concept Cables.

“Achieving a consistent and acceptable drying standard has always been difficult and costly when using compressed air, but with ACI's blower-driven drying unit, we have overcome our drying difficulties and saved money as well.”

ACI's blower powered LINE-Dry system can handle products up to 25mm in diameter at speeds of 500m/min. The blower is an ACI variable speed 'Multi-Stage' unit controlled via a speed controller, which gives flexibility to accommodate different products and line speeds.

Air is delivered at up to 2.8psi (80in. SWG) at speeds of 8,800m/min (28,900ft/min) at 80oC.