Plastics News senior reporter Bill Bregar gathered these show briefs from the Society of Plastics Engineers' Thermoforming Conference, held Sept. 24-27 in Milwaukee.
SC pressure formers run at high speeds
Zed Industries Inc. of Vandalia, Ohio, announced the custom-made, in-line pressure formers called the SC Series. The servo-driven thermoforming machines run at high speeds.
Maximum mold sizes range from 25 inches by 25 inches to 60 inches by 80 inches. Zed also makes trim machines of 110-230 tons.
A new feature is a self-compensating seal system.
RPT's rotating table brings part to robot
Compact and portable, the RT-400 router from Robotic Production Technology Inc. uses a rotating table to bring the part to the robot for routing and trimming.
RPT routers use Fanuc articulating robots to trim parts.
The servo-controlled turntable allows each side of the part to be trimmed in a very compact area. The base of the RT-400 supports the entire router - so a forklift can move the machine to another area of the factory.
Turning the part also makes the router work more efficiently, said Roberta Zald, engineering director for RPT in Auburn Hills, Mich. ``It uses coordinated motion between the robot and the table, so the robot keeps trimming while the table is moving,'' she said.
The portable router can handle parts as large as 40 inches high and 45 inches wide.
On the show floor, an RT-400 trimmed an appliance part. RPT technicians programmed the machine off-line, using computer-aided-design models of parts, with RPT's TrimPro software. RPT also ran parts on its RT-1000 router.
