PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2018

INSPECTION 37 PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 06/18 www.petpla.net INSPECTION 37 operation in the world, with over 5,000 bottles designed by Sipa engineers to date. “We focus on a ‘design to production’ philosophy to make sure bottles not only look good on the shelf but also are able to be produced with- out difficulty, while giving due con- sideration to sustainability and light weighting.” To support their ‘design to produc- tion’ philosophy, Sipa has invested in a comprehensive prototyping area that supports the tooling operations. In this section, they have all of the appropriate laboratory and design equipment present to develop light weight efforts, produce new preform or bottle design prototypes and thor- oughly test them. “This is a capability that is especially valuable to Sipa’s ability to supply complete systems”, explained Ms Bottarel. “There are not many companies that know both pre- forms and bottles. Sipa can provide design services for preforms and the bottles as well as the equipment to make them. Our customers can come to us for everything.” Agr Gawis test systems play a crit- ical role in the qualification process of moulds and machines for both bottles and preforms that are produced. “The Gawis systems are used in several stages as Sipa’s ‘design to production’ Agr Gawis test systems play a criti- cal role in the qualification process of moulds and machines for both bottles and preforms that are produced at the Sipa facility. CSD and non-carbonated pressurised bot- tles are tested with the Agr PPT3000 as part of the design qualification process. process is implemented on a given project”, noted Roberto De Luca, QC Lab Manager at Sipa. Early in the bottle design process, when there is a focus on creativity and the bot- tles have been evaluated via FEA analysis, pre-production prototypes of the bottles are produced for analysis and per- formance testing of the designs prior to the cutting of the final moulds. During this testing phase comprised of various analyses, there is particular emphasis on thickness distribu- tion. Top load strength is very important for the performance of the bottle, and collapsibility is directly linked to the thick- ness. As explained by Mr De Luca, “According with the bottle shape, Sipa’s qualifica- tion process may require up to 50-60 different thickness meas- urements over the entire bottle to be documented to verify that material is properly distributed when the bottle is produced. The Gawis system is used to provide these measurements. A complete scan of the bottle, using the Gawis system, takes on average 2-3 minutes to fully profile the bottle for thickness and finish dimensions. Manu- ally, this would take at least double the amount of time.” Additionally, the Gawis is very helpful in automating dimensional measurements, especially in certain tests like thermal stability for CSD and distortion in hot filling applica- tions, where the behaviour of the packaging is evaluated by the comparison of the dimen- sions measured before and after the thermal treatment. Once the bottle design is fully established, and the final set of moulds is produced, another round of testing is performed on the produc- tion bottles. Before a mould or a complete blowing line is released to a customer, the bottles or preforms produced TUNING UP YOUR PRODUCTION Mould & Matic Solutions GmbH Ziehbergstraße 2 4563 Micheldorf AUSTRIA T +43 7582 617 60-0 VѝJL'TV\SKHUKTH[PJ JVT www.mouldandmatic.com BLOWLINER Injection Stretch Blow Moulding – customised to your needs