TECHNOLOGY | MATERIALS PREPARATION
Above: Piovan has designed, manufactured and installed a complex materials handling
system to meet the exacting specifications of North American injection moulder Nordson Medical.
company says that this greatly reduces the energy requirement of the dryer, while providing high efficiency. The dew point of the process air that is fed to the plastic granulate is consistently between -50°C and -80°C. Environmental influences and climatic conditions have no influence on the result of the drying, so that a constant drying process is ensured. According to Simar, the essential difference of eDry dryers compared to the traditional dryer constructions is that the inflow of moisture-laden ambient air is reduced in a controlled manner, or completely prevented, by means of an Eco valve. This reduction extends the adsorption time of the molecular sieve up to the time of saturation. This means that the time until a new regeneration start is required is extended. Since every regeneration cycle needs a high amount of energy, the extended regeneration breaks significantly reduces the total energy consumption of the dryer. Dry air is exclusively used for regeneration and cooling of the desiccant. In eDry dryers, the duration of the regeneration process is not time-controlled, but depends, according to need, on the moisture loading of the desiccant. This results in consistent and optimal regeneration. The maximum water absorption capacity is reached in every regeneration cycle, independent of the climatic conditions. The dew point measurement of the process air regulates the start of regeneration or switching over to a regenerated drying tower. As a result, dew point variations of the process air are prevented and consistent drying results are ensured. Piovan has designed, manufactured and installed a complex materials handling system to meet the exacting specifications of a leading North American injection moulder that involved its Modula drying systems, as well as Easylink auto- matic coupling stations, Quantum blenders and Pureflo filterless receivers – all controlled by
50 INJECTION WORLD | March 2018
Winfactory 4.0. The Nordson Medical Fluid Man- agement Facility operates 48 unattended injection moulding machines and a complement of robots which mould, assemble and package 1.2 million parts per day in a large clean room operation. Nordson Medical says that it required a materials handling system that met its business needs. The plant runs lights-out, which is key to the business. Lights-out manufacturing is a mind-set for process- ing. It starts with picking the right equipment, then following a good preventive maintenance pro- gramme with tight tolerances on everything, then training on all the equipment to make sure every- one knows how it works. Part design and tool design are also key to the success in the lights-out environment, says Nordson Medical: when every- thing comes together and there is a solid, validated process, there is not much tweaking to do. The plant is set up on the philosophy that if a
part is rejected, it is kicked out, and the machine resets itself and keeps running. If many are rejected or there is a problem with the moulding machine, the machine shuts down while others keep run- ning. Everything is recorded, so the problem can be solved in the morning. The ERP (enterprise resource planning) system
provides a wide range of custom production to pull any material from any hopper to any machine in an automated way with no manual intervention. The Winfactory 4.0 system is based on OPC-UA (Open Platform Communications-Unified Architecture) and can connect all Piovan machines, as well as equipment from other manufacturers. It also optimises energy consumption, collects data needed to validate medical products and inter- faces with the plant’s management system. Nordson Medical adds that there is no way for a
materials handling system that does not monitor material as it moves through the system to be able to accurately calculate that. The Piovan system monitors the entire throughput, measuring how much material came in and was consumed and calculating the throughput. It uses that information to make correct materials handling decisions. Resin is delivered to the plant about two times a week and it is bar coded before going into one of four surge bins that can each hold 10,000 lbs (4,536 kg) of resin. This step provides the materials handling system with the data to identify and locate any material in the plant as it is blended, dried and consumed by the moulding machines. From the machine set-up, the materials handling system can determine how much dried resin it will need. The system knows the amount of material in the dryers and the time it will take to reach
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