| DETAILED PROCESS DESCRIPTION
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| PETForm |
Very high productivity and efficiency are the keys to success in the PET preform manufacturing business. To deliver on both these factors, KraussMaffei engineers developed the PETForm machine range, which exploits the force of gravity. |
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| Principle |
| PETForm is a high-performance system with a vertical clamp unit. The vertical clamp is an outstanding feature of PETForm systems. Designing it, our engineers worked on the 'keep-it-simple' principle. With a vertical clamp, preforms drop in freefall from the mould cavities into a lightweight, contoured gripper and are then immediately transferred into a separate post-cooling station. The benefits range from more efficient stripping to higher system availability. |
| Technology |
The superior performance of the separate cooling station means that 85% of the required cooling time can be implemented outside the mould. This cuts cycle time significantly. The vertical clamp also guarantees the extremely high platen parallelism necessary for precise, tilt-free mould closing. Preform moulds generally have a very high cavity count, but even then the vertical design protects the delicate mould contours, especially in the neck area. This results in far longer mould service life and highest product quality over production runs lasting many years.
Preform stripping is a simple, direct process. The preforms 'drop' into a lightweight gripper. Gravity-assisted, ie, with minimal effort, the preforms are transferred into the product-specific half shells of the gripper. The simple stripping process results in minimal opening strokes. No pressurized air support is required for ejection. Furthermore, the gripper needs no vacuum to keep the preforms precisely positioned and securely held. Especially with moulds of 96 cavities and more, short cycles using pressurized air make substantial demands on energy consumption. KraussMaffei's PETForm process makes it possible to strip preforms of almost any length and design with consistently high quality and with comparatively low power consumption. |
| Customer benefits |
- Increased productivity and high yield of good parts thanks to the vertical-clamp system
- Built-in protection for your investment; mould life up to 15,000,000 cycles
- Constant premium product quality for virtually any preform variants
- Low unit manufacturing cost thanks to significantly lower resource consumption
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PETForm production cells for preforms
