Austrian based injection moulding machine manufacturer and systems provider ENGEL, in collaboration with partner companies, will present a complete system solution in a highly integrated production of beverage caps at Hall A4, booth 324.
During the five days of the fair, under actual production conditions and at a cycle time of under 2.5 seconds, the production cell will deliver 26-mm caps made of HDPE and including tamper-proof bands.
At the core of the highly integrated solution is an ENGEL e‑cap 2440/380 injection moulding machine with a clamping force of 3800 kN. A 96-cavity mould by Corvaglia from Eschlikon in Switzerland will be used. ENGEL has integrated additional peripherals into the system including a DMS dry-air system by Blue Air Systems (Kundl, Austria), a TWIN model cap inspection system by IMDvista (Brügg, Switzerland), and material handling units by Piovan (S. Maria di Sala VE, Italy). The hot-runner temperature control is made by S.i.S.e. (Oyonnax, France), and partners for the raw materials are Borealis, (Vienna, Austria) and Gabriel Chemicals (Gumpoldskirchen, Austria).
“In terms of geometry, beverage caps have reached their lightweighting minimum. This means that the demands on the precision and repeatability of injection moulding machines are higher than ever before”, says Frank Schuster, Sales Director of ENGEL packaging, describing a trend that is often decisive in the design of injection moulding machines and production cells for cap production. In addition, the sensitivity of producers to energy efficiency continues to increase. In order to meet both challenges, ENGEL is focusing on all-electric high-performance machines for cap production. With clamping forces of 1,100 to 4,200 kN, the ENGEL e-cap series was developed specifically for this market segment.
In addition to the injection moulding machine, automation, peripherals, and mould, software products for digitalisation and networking are more and more often part of the package. “Industry 4.0 is opening up huge opportunities for even higher efficiency and quality”, clarifies Schuster. “We support our customers in realising this potential.”
Under the inject 4.0 name, ENGEL offers a comprehensive range of products and solutions for the three areas of the smart factory. Among other things, the focus will be on MES authentig.
In order to be able to monitor and analyse the current condition of individual machines from a central computer, including their utilisation and output, all the production units are interconnected through the Manufacturing Execution System. Transferred in real-time, their data can be correlated to both quality and business performance indicators and analysed in various ways. Tailored to the specific requirements of the injection moulding industry, authentig, which was developed by Technische Informationssysteme GmbH and which has now been part of the ENGEL Group for a year, achieves particularly deep vertical data integration, down to the level of individual cavities.