Rutland Plastics, is a private company based in Oakham Rutland with a 66000 ft sq factory and a turnover in excess of £10 million, operating moulding machines ranging from 150 tonne to 1700 tonne. Looking to achieve unattended production on a Krauss Maffei KM150, Rutland Plastics selected UPM Conveyors to provide a turnkey solution requiring 8 belt conveyors to allow automatic product divert for QC inspection; ferrous/non-ferrous metal detection; product cooling; parts separation and box filling with a capacity of 8 full; 8 empty and 1 filling.
Product divert is achieved with a small reversing conveyor located onto a swan neck conveyor in the well of the machine and at any stage in production an operator can energise to reverse and transfer a shot to an integral sample drawer for QC inspection.
Metal detection is based on UPM inserting a search coil under the inclined section of the Swan Neck in the well of the machine and on detecting a foreign body will energise an audible / visual alarm and stop the belt conveyor so an operator can check and remove the contamination.
This does not affect the moulding machine cycle as product continues to be produced and accumulated on the conveyor until the operator has reset to start again.
Product cooling is necessary to avoid any deformation to the mouldings which are produced in PP on multi-cavity tools ranging from 8-16 impressions mould and 4 sprues with a section thickness of 5 to 15mm and UPM fitted a cooling tunnel with high flow air fans to reduce the temperature from 80oc to 20oc.
Parts separation is via a roller drum with central adjustment for the gap to allow ease of changing so the sprues exit onto another swan neck for transfer to a granulator and mouldings discharge to a third swan neck for conveying to the box filling station.
The UPM box filling station is a two tier construction and was designed to accommodate 8 full boxes; 8 empty and 1 filling with the box located onto a weigh scale to count by weight which achieves an extremely high level of accuracy so on achieving the correct pre-weight/count the overhead conveyor will stop; the full box is indexed off and an empty box brought onto the weight scale which initiates the overhead conveyor to start again repeating the cycle. When all boxes are full a sensor will energise an audible /visual alarm to alert an operator.
The central control is a PLC controlling all aspects of the system interfacing with the variable speed drives on each conveyor and connecting to the weigh scale.
Rutland expressed their total satisfaction with the UPM project team who installed and commissioned the system which is operating 24/7 trouble free.
