PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2017

PET products 44 PET planet Insider Vol. 18 No. 05/17 www.petpla.net Sipa upgrades ECS SP injection-stretch-blow moulding line Sipa has made some important improvements to its ECS SP range of medium-sized single-stage injection-stretch-blowmoulding (ISBM) machines. These units, which complement Sipa’s larger single-stage ECS FX and ECS HS systems, were added to the Sipa portfolio when it acquired some of the activities of Automa, another well-known PET processing equipment supplier, in late 2014. Sipa says that its ECS SP system is ideal for the production of speciality containers for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, personal care products and spirits, particularly (but not exclusively) in sizes between 20 and 50ml. Two models are available: the ECS SP 50 with a 500kN injection clamp force, and the 800kN ECS SP 80. The latest ECS SPmachines feature an upgraded user interface (HMI), as well as improvements to the injection system, preform conditioning and bottle blowing. The machines can now also accept a wider range of legacy moulds. Sipa has replaced the original thermal gating in the preform injection hot runner systemwith needle valve gates. Because these new gates can be purged much more quickly, the time taken to get the machine up and running is notably shorter. Injection point quality has also been improved, thanks again to the valve gate system, and with much less risk of gate stringing or incidence of off-centred injection points. The number of tasks that the opera- tor needs to carry out every time the machine stops and restarts has been reduced, and the more straightforward geometry of the gates enables a simpler solution for clearing the hot runner system. There was a redesign of the preform conditioning system on the ECS SP. The company says that higher power heaters have been developed, along with the new approach, offering customers a wider process window and the option of internal conditioning. The process is now more energy efficient and each individual cavity can be provided with its own conditioning parameters, determined according to the design of the preform. Numerous changes have been made to the bottle blowing sec- tion on the ECS SP, with the result that the process is now more stable and energy-efficient. Laurent Sigler, Head of Innovation at Sipa explained that Sipa used the knowledge that it built up with its original ECS series to enable blowing conditions in each cavity to be managed separately, in order to ensure that every bottle is perfect. This upgrade means that different blowing parameters can be set for every single blowing cavity, so that the blowing pres- sure in each mould can be accurately and individually fine-tuned. A special “compatibility kit”, now available for the ECS SP, makes it much easier to accept major competitors’ moulds, which were originally intended to run on single-stage ISBM machines. It is now possible to quickly adjust the vertical position of an extruder according to the mould, without having to use the previous, rather less robust, adaptor solution. www.sipa.it Volumetric dosing unit with flexible exchange system Whether powder, pellets, regrind, granulate, flakes or fibres, the new Spectroflex V of Motan is a volumetric dosing unit for continuous processes, designed for many different appli- cations. Should material colour, flow properties or grain size change, than motan´s exchange system offers a simple way to swap materials without the need of tools in under a minute. The single- and double-screw exchange modules as well as the easy-to-clean supply hopper allow for fast and easy material changes and so reduces production downtime. The material loader mounted on the cover of the supply hopper does not have to be removed during the material change, resulting in higher efficiency and shorter downtimes in your production. Thanks to the function of the massage-rollers, even non- free flowing and fragile materials are no longer a problem. Powered by an independent motor and designed for 48 dif- ferent settings, Spectroflex V offers high dosing accuracy for a wide range of materials - even for small dosing quantities. The special design of the oscillating elliptical rollers extends the service life of the polyurethane dosing hoppers. The Spectroflex V is equipped with an intuitive touch screen for trouble-free and simple control. The integration into an existing motan Controlnet network is possible via an Ethernet interface, as an option the conveying control can also be integrated. www.motan-colortronic.com