THIN WALL MOULDING | INNOVATION
The Thin Wall Integra project brings together experts to push the boundaries of moulding thin wall packaging. James Snodgrass writes about innovations in packaging and electronics moulding
Going further with thin wall moulding
As the trend towards lighter, stronger, higher volume packaging continues apace, thin-wall injection moulding continues to be a growth sector: with compounders making stronger and more sustainable PP and PP copolymer grades and processors finding ways to make walls ever thinner, and cycle times ever shorter. Mordor Intelligence research indicates that the thin-wall packaging market was valued at $38.58bn (€34.62bn) in 2020 and is expected to reach $55.92bn (€50.18bn) by 2026, at a CAGR of 6% over the forecast period of 2021-2026. Research from Emergen is even more encouraging. The Canadian market intelligence company believes the market could reach $66.75bn (€59.82) by 2027. Novel thin-wall moulding applications have also emerged within engineering thermoplastics for personal transportation and consumer electronics applica- tions, where a combination of light weight and strength is as vital as it is for the packaging sector. Co-operation between mould makers, robotics
experts, IML label manufacturers, raw materials suppliers and an injection moulding machine manufacturer has resulted in the Thin Wall Integra project – a new approach to the production of thin-walled packaging. The novel production cell in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, is a collaboration
www.injectionworld.com
between Collomb, a mould maker specialising in thin-walled containers; Pagès Group, a specialist in packaging robotics; Verstraete, an IML label manufacturer; Koch-Technik, a material flow specialist; Borealis, a raw materials supplier and the French subsidiary of German machine maker Arburg. Thin Wall Integra is intended to be a one-stop shop concept for the production of thin-walled five-litre buckets. The concept is a fully automated injection moulding cell built around a hybrid Arburg Allrounder 720 H machine, in packaging variant, with a one-cavity mould. The complete cycle takes around 5s. Both the injection moulding machine and the sequentially operating robotic system are optimised for fast cycles. The handling system with telescopic arm that engages from the rear side of the machine first loads the mould with the IML labels. The robotic system then removes the finished labelled buckets and stacks them on a deposit mat. The stacks are then automatically picked up by a robot for palletising. The two robot technologies used make the system particularly compact. The granule (Borealis’s UJ599MO-90, a compounded polyolefin solution containing 55% mechanically recovered post consumer recyclate) is continuously fed in through an automatic
Main image: In the Thin Wall Integra project, a fully auto- mated injection moulding cell has been designed around a
hybrid Arburg Allrounder 720 H in packaging version
March 2022 | INJECTION WORLD 23
IMAGE: ARBURG
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