PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2015

INSPECTION EQUIPMENT 42 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 09/15 www.petpla.net ously shortened to its initial letters Agr. David Dineff explained: “The similar- ity in the measuring methods for glass and, after that, PET containers formed the starting point for conducting further research here and for adapting our machines for PET. Today we serve both sectors equally effectively”. A further important step in Agr’s history was the acquisition of Topwave Industries in 1999, which brought with it extended potential in terms of the product portfolio. After the acquisition of Topwave, during the years up to and around the turn of the century, Agr developed several other products such as Pilot Technology, which, as in the case of OLT, was used for the measurement of PET bottle wall thickness at production speeds with corresponding manage- ment of blow moulding lines. The Pilot System ensures, with its interactive control of the blow moulder, that wall thickness is managed precisely, on every bottle. This is true on difficult to process bottles, and especially those that have undergone aggressive light- weighting efforts. “At the moment there are 250-300 of these systems in use worldwide in the reheat stretch blow mouldings sector,” says David Dineff ”Many of the major beverage compa- nies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nia- gara, AB InBev, Nestlé etc. form part of our customer base”. The main site at Butler has been retained with all its traditional and his- toric aspects. It is here, spread over several buildings with a total area of more than 12,000m 2 , that the complete production complex, plus the R&D Center, training and presentation rooms as well as the offices, is to be found. Agr has around 230 employees world- wide, 180 of whom are stationed in Butler. Agr’s global presence is split into four sectors: the Americas, Southern Europe/Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia. These are independent loca- tions with four regional directors offering a full range of services in addition to sales. “Our annual growth is between 4% and 6%”, says Robert Cowden. Agr is in private hands and has 15 share- holders. The main shareholder is Henry Dimmick Jr. What is it that makes Agr so spe- cial? “Well, we are currently the only company in the world that is able to supply machinery for real-time measurement and automated pro- cess control of PET container pro- duction at normal speeds”, replies Robert Cowden. “Our philosophy is to generate value-creating solutions. We employ an expert team of engineers, technicians and physicists whose job it is to develop ideas that do not occur to anyone else”. One of these is a machine add-on for the Process Pilot system by the name of Crys- talview. This is intended to monitor and manage crystallinity/orientation. The aim is, by producing PET bottles with a consistent crystalline structure, to create more options within the light- weighting sector, improve the barrier characteristics and at the same time maintain the optimal wall thickness of PET containers. Certainly a meaning- ful idea when it comes to tackling the material savings side, especially con- sidering that material is a significant portion of the total unit cost. “Our Chief Technical Officer Mr George Wolfe published some test results on crys- talline structure in PET bottle manu- facture using hot and cold moulds in 2014”, explains Robert Cowden. “As regards to CSD bottle manufacture in the cold moulding process, the tests showed, in the case of half litre and 2 litre bottles, that the time to stress cracking in relation to stretching tem- perature plays a decisive role”. (Fig.1) It is evident that the time to stress cracking improved significantly by maximising orientation in the cold pro- cess without any secondary effects. For bottle manufacturers this would signify good stress crack perfor- mance, minimum volume expansion under pressure, and maximum shelf- life and burst pressure (Fig.2). For the cold mould process, the Crystalview product will enable the processing of preforms at the coldest possible temperatures for optimisation of the crystalline structure. In addi- tion to improved bottle quality and performance this will offer the added benefit of significant energy savings that result from reduced processing temperatures. A version of Crystalview is also under development to regulate the hot mould process in a similar way. In this case, Crystalview will facilitate the processing of preforms at the hottest possible temperatures to maximise crystallinity/orientation with- out affecting the bottle clarity. The management of crystallin- ity/orientation in combination with maintaining the correct material thick- ness completes the process. Here Agr’s Process Pilot system comes into effect, which precisely controls and maintains material distribution, for either the hot or cold process, at a specified thickness to within ~0.0025mm and rounds off the overall process. Agr has announced that Crys- talview will be released on to the market in the first quarter of 2016. www.agrintl.com F.l.t.r.: David Dineff and Robert S. Cowden in front of the Pilot Profiler