ACS Group unveils auxiliary equipment
ACS Group, a Wood Dale, Ill.-based maker of auxiliary equipment, has announced a new, integrated structure.
The five existing divisions will merge with new downstream extrusion and systems engineering offerings, in a move to provide a more integrated approach to auxiliary equpment. Equipment formerly produced under the Whitlock, HydReclaim, Nelmor, Application Engineering and Automation Engineering names all now will bear the same AEC brand name and label.
``Although the original brand names are backed by a strong history and reputation, we believe the company has evolved,'' said Kevin Chudyk, vice president of sales. ``Combining all of the divisions under the AEC name more accurately represents the services we offer.''
ACS also named Richard Kobor executive vice president of operations, overseeing the three ACS Group companies - AEC Inc., Sterling and Cumberland Engineering.
In addition to equipment, the company provides system planning and engineering, installation, start-up operations, training, preventative maintenance and emergency services. By simplifying ACS' products and services, Kobor and his team want to reduce lead times, improve quality and reduce costs.
In other news, ACS:
* Announced it signed a vendor financing agreement with CIT Group Inc., a commercial and consumer finance company. ACS Group will be able to offer customers low-interest financing, making it easier to make large purchases.
* Introduced a multizone mold-temperature control unit for molding compact discs or digital versatile discs. The TCU is available with four or six zones. Each control unit features moving and stationary mold half zones, and a set of sprue and punch zones. For easy maintenance, each zone is individually wired and plumbed, so the entire zone can be removed and replaced as a single piece.
* Introduced the AEA series of traverse robots, designed for removing and placing parts on injection presses with up to 500 tons of clamping force. Features include a hand-held controller with large screen and 10 standard and 10 teachable programs.
Tel. (630) 595-1060, fax (630) 595-6641.
ARC Advisory says HMI market to grow
The human/machine interface - the control panels an operator uses to run a machine - will grow faster than the general industrial automation industry, from $414 million in 2001 to nearly $590 million in 2006, according to a study by ARC Advisory Group of Dedham, Mass.
Senior ARC analyst Dick Slansky said several factors are driving the growth, including the adoption of Internet-based technology, collaborative manufacturing systems that link the machine to management-level information systems, new products offering wireless operator interface and the need for information to move across all manufacturing systems.
ARC notes that the European market has become larger than North America for operator interfaces, because European manufacturers lagged the U.S. recession, and because European auto- mation and interface suppliers do more business with basic functional sectors such as packaging, material handling and machine tools.
Slansky is predicting a compounded annual growth rate of 7.3 percent over the next five years.
Tel. (781) 471-1000, fax (781) 471-1100, e-mail [email protected]
Davis-Standard touts extrusion system
Davis-Standard Corp. supplied a customized, microlayer film production line for a large manufacturer of shoes.
The Pawcatuck, Conn.-based company supplied the extruders, downstream equipment, screws, cooling equipment, an online thickness gauge and a rollstack and conveyor.
The line also incorporates a feedblock technology that makes it possible to extrude films with hundreds of layers, but with the thickness of a typical multilayer film. For example, the films for shoes have 50-100 layers using four different high-barrier materials. The films are 6 mils thick, with layers as thin as 0.00008 inch.
Davis-Standard did not identify the shoe manufacturer.
Tel. (860) 599-1010, e-mail [email protected]
Synventive Molding adds to nozzle line
Synventive Molding Solutions Inc. of Peabody, Mass., has expanded its line and features of single-heater-band injection molding nozzles.
The nozzles now are available in sizes up to 26 inches long, with a 3-inch outside diameter and 1-inch bore size.
Thanks to Synventive's proprietary heat pipe technology, the nozzles require just one heater band, reducing downtime that is caused by the failure of electrical equipment. Options have been expanded for heaterless nozzles, heaterless nozzles with adapters, and nozzles with heaters.
Depending on the model, the nozzles can be used to mold nearly all commodity and engineering-grade resins, according to the company.
Tel. (978) 750-8065, fax (978) 646-3600, e-mail [email protected]
SIG machine handles 14 parisons at once
Troisdorf, Germany-based SIG Blowtec GmbH & Co. KG recently delivered its first multicavity, long-stroke blow molding machine in the BlowPac 4 series. The unit handles 14 parisons at once.
The buyer was the Worms, Germany, plant of Huber Verpackungen GmbH & Co. KG.
Huber will use the press to mold high density polyethylene bottles for nonfood applications, on a cycle time of 14 seconds. Huber can produce about 3,600 bottles an hour.
Until now, production with a similar large number of cavities on the Blowtecs has been limited to smaller parts, such as cosmetic bottles.
The hydraulic machine is equipped with a parison die head from Willi Muller GmbH of Troisdorf.
The parison center distance is 100 millimeters.
A special feature of the machine is servo-driven bottle demolding with an integrated leak tester that uses seven test heads. Each test head checks two bottles on each cycle.
SIG Blowtec is a unit of SIG Plastics International GmbH of Essen, Germany.
In other news, another SIG unit, SIG Corpoplast GmbH & Co. KG, hosted 240 visitors from 37 countries at its International Technology Conference in Hamburg, Germany, in mid-October. Corpo- plast specializes in PET blow molding machines.
SIG's U.S. headquarters is SIG Plastics Technologies (USA) Inc. of North Branch, N.J.
Tel. (908) 252-9350.
Progressive alerting users of date stamp
If you molded parts using a date stamp from Progressive Components, be alert.
The Wauconda, Ill., company has issued a product alert for date stamps sold between July 2000 and August 2001.
The company has learned that some of the items were spinning during production, which molded in the wrong dates.
Progressive said the cause was identified as fatigue of an internal spring in the date ring, which remains in the mold while replacement plugs are changed from year to year.
The product was made in Spain and distributed by Progressive Components until 2001.
Progressive said it has replaced the products with a new design that does not have an internal spring.
Customers can return the date stamps for a replacement.
Molders can identify the product by the date range. Also, the outer ring has ``CUMSA'' etched on it.
Tel. (800) 269-6653.
Company introduces measuring device
Agr*TopWave LLC of Butler, Pa., said its Gawis automated system for measuring thickness and dimensional accuracy of plastic bottles and preforms now is available with AutoFeed.
Gawis AF permits several laboratory tests to be performed in one operation, including measuring container sidewall, heel and shoulder thickness, body profile measurements in several locations, finish dimensions, height, lean and push-up.
It can do hands-free testing of up to 20 containers or 72 preforms, which frees up technicians for other tasks.
Also new from Agr*TopWave is the Profiler Multilayer Gauge, a nondestructive device to verify the presence of nylon barrier materials in multilayer preforms and containers.
The machine replaces the old method of physically cutting and separating the layers, then measuring them individually. Built-in routines allow the tests in three ways: on a pass/fail basis for the presence of barrier layers, actual measurement of the barrier and its distribution over the entire sample, or a 360-degree horizontal measurement of the material with distribution at specific locations.
Tel. (724) 482-2163, fax (724) 482-2767.