hotrunners | Innovation Right: Rotary
elements in the Rheo-Pro Slide manifold from Mold Hotrunner Solutions
allows the nozzles to
articulate with moving mould elements
the cost premium of its controllers over standard PID units in this range from 200% or more to just 20%. But while a large part of the company’s development effort was to make high end performance available to moulders at lower cost, he says the other key goal was to make sure those performance features were used. The result is its new Mold Wizard, which is designed to make both set-up and ongoing operation more simple. “We are trying to shorten the time it takes to trouble- shoot, shorten the time it takes to train, and detect the things that can cause downtime,” he says. “It quickly and automatically configures the system and ensures that the controller is set to detect plastic leaks in the hot runner system, predict heater failure, and detect thermocouples that are underperforming or failing.” Hot runner leaks can be a costly problem and can
Below:
Gammaflux’s latest G24 controller is claimed to offer high level performance at close to PID costs
result in weeks of lost production on a complex tool. Brostedt says that by monitoring heater wattage rather than simple line power, its G24 systems are highly sensitive to any developing problems in the system. Other G24 features include the option of standard two-zone 15A and new 30A zone output modules and improved machine interlock function. At the K2013 show in Dusseldorf last month, Germany-based Männer - which produces high performance moulds and the Micro-Män micro moulding system and is part of Barnes Group along with Synventive - showed a newly developed valve gate for processing COC and COP resins (cyclic olefin polymer and copolymer) in the medical sector, as well as an updated high-end hotrunner controller. The COC/COP hotrunner nozzle is a special version
of the company’s Sidegate design. It features an extended pin opening stroke – to provide a larger internal flow cross section – while the component design has been modified to provide additional active heating and control for each nozzle tip and support ring, which is claimed to improve the temperature profile along the entire flow path. The nozzle was demonstrat- ed as part of a disposable syringe mould with four single point Sidegate nozzles. Also new from the company is the HCS-TS 2 hotrunner temperature controller, intended for use with high performance multi-cavity and stack moulds. Designed to support between 24 and 180 zones, the new controller includes an improved configuration ‘wizard’ set-up tool and integrated leak detection.
Managing the melt The expanded role of the hotrunner in today’s plastics injection moulding industry is also apparent at Canada’s Moldmasters, now part of the US-based Milacron group and celebrating its 50th
anniversary this year. “In the
past we said we were a hotrunner supplier, now we say we are a melt distribution and control systems com- pany,” says MoldMasters CEO Bruce Catoen. This can be clearly seen in products such as its E-Multi electric auxiliary injection unit and its Iris coinjection technol- ogy, which uses the E-Multi together with a number of other standard products from its hotrunner line to deliver coinjection moulding capabilities on standard injection moulding machines. Latest additions to the MoldMasters’ hotrunner
54 INJECTION WORLD | November/December 2013
www.injectionworld.com
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