PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2015

CAPPING / CLOSURES 31 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 12/15 www.petpla.net In-house exhibition at Sacmi, Imola by Alexander Büchler Over the past few years Sacmi has transformed itself into a full service provider. Gone are the days when Sacmi was simply a byword for closures. With a view to providing a comprehensive overview of wide by diverse techniques, ranging from preforms through to stretch blow moulding, filling and (of course) clo- sures, Sacmi went ahead and issued an invitation to its in- house exhibition in mid-September. 218 guests from 42 coun- tries took up the invitation. The starting point for any customer or machine development is the Sacmi Beverage R&D Center. Here Sacmi innovations are created and tested before being industrialised and placed on the market. This facility is certified by top global players. The starting point for a bottle is the preform, and Sacmi were keen to show- case its latest developments in relation to the IPS (injection preform moulding) with the IPS220 and the new IPS400 for moulds with up to 128 cavities. The operation of the lines is highly energy efficient, and the cycle times are very short. The IPS400 includes the auto- mated preform unloading system that picks and places preforms directly in octabins, new circuiting inside the plasti- cising unit and a special preform cooling station configuration in which the kinetic energy of the picker is recovered and converted into electrical energy. One exciting technology was the CBF (Compression Blow Forming) for dairy containers, launched on the market by Sacmi some years ago. A produc- tion unit for a 100ml HDPE bottle with 12,000bph was on display. The bottle weighs 6g. This technology lends itself to integration with a filler, able to shorten the production cycle and increase prod- uct safety due to clean environment and less handling. A version for PET has been announced. Sacmi also demonstrated their stretch blow moulding line SBF408, on which up to 27,200bph can be produced in double cavity operation. Running on the line was a 0,5l still water bottle weighing 12g. Naturally, there was no ignoring the compression closures (CCM). This branch continues to represent Sacmi’s bread and butter business. The CCM model presented during the open day was a 48 cavity one running at 2.000 caps/min for a 29mm HDPE single-piece cap, resulting in a 1,4 seconds cycle time. All this was under the banner of “The H.E.R.O Project” or High Effi- ciency Resource Optimiser. The project has been applied to all new machines design and enables savings to be made in terms of raw materials, energy and storage logistics. Sacmi had shown an interactive 3D animation of an integrated H.E.R.O. beverage line highlighting the various technologies, allowing the indi- vidual machines to be examined directly from the point of view of the operator. www.sacmi.it info@hasplastik.com Tel: +90 212 695 50 00 Fax: +90 212 694 97 24 100815dmyR .com Sacmi technicians preparing the closure line for start-up