At Medtec Europe 2015, which takes place in Stuttgart, Germany on 21-23 April, plastics moulding equipment company Arburg will present an electric Allrounder 470 A with a clamping force of 1000kN and a size 170 injection unit specially equipped for processing liquid silicone (LSR). The Allrounder will produce bellows — used as a valve in medical test devices — and demonstrate that the cleanroom connection to the machine via an encapsulated conveyor belt is a cost-effective production solution.
Bellows with a weight of 3g will be produced using a four-cavity mould manufactured by Rico. Four parts are produced in a cycle time of 40 seconds with ‘free falling’ demoulding. The mould features open cold runner technology for direct injection. This ensures the production of flash-free and rework-free parts. Demoulding of the item is done automatically via an innovative pneumatically actuated wiper unit from Rico. The material Silpuran 6000/50 is supplied by Wacker, whereas the dosage system is supplied by Reinhardt.
The Allrounder is particularly equipped for production in a clean environment and features a laminar-flow box, a stainless steel sorter unit and an extended machine conveyor belt with tunnel housing for cleanroom docking. In addition, the light grey colour and raised machine feet ensure easy cleaning.
The direct-acting servo-electric drives on the machine are encapsulated and liquid cooled as standard to ensure a clean and low-emission production environment. A further energy efficient measure is energy recovery during braking. Finally, a clean air module with ionisation (ISO Class 3) above the clamping unit provides the necessary clean atmosphere. Parts can be transported directly into the cleanroom along an encapsulated conveyor belt, while the machine and LSR dosing system are installed outside the cleanroom.
The modular product range from Arburg renders production cells configurable and allows them to be precisely tailored to customer-specific production requirements.
