At NPE2018, Graham Engineering Corp. will display some of its flagship extrusion-based equipment for blow molding, sheet, medical tubing, wire and cable, and other applications. Each will have the company's Navigator control system.
Graham Engineering will be at booth W2743. The company is based in York, Pa.
The company's proprietary Navigator control technology uses an industrial personal computer with a Windows platform.
“Real-time graphical display is a hallmark of Navigator,” said Justin Kilgore, vice president of Engineering at the York, Pa.-based machinery maker.
“High visual correlation between the touchscreen and machine function ensures an intuitive user experience that enables both new and experienced operators a rapid learning curve and ease of use,” he said.
Here is a recap of processing systems Graham Engineering will display at NPE2018:
• Mini Hercules accumulator-head blow molding machine, which combines a small shot and space-saving footprint, with a one-hour material change and other features available with the company's larger accumulator-head machines. It is available with shot sizes of 2.5, 5 or 8 pounds. The footprint is about 15 feet by 11 feet, and the press is 15 feet high. Mini Hercules comes with a single-head or dual-head configuration and bottom or side discharge.
• A modular clamp station for the Revolution MVP rotary wheel blow molding machine. Each clamp station is independent of the others., and all forces are self-contained within the clamp. Water manifolds through the platens facilitate quick mold changes. Individual clamps can be removed for offline maintenance. The company said this modularity allows the user to vary the number of clamp stations from 12 to 24 on the same platform, and configure the wheel based on the application and bottle height.
• The Welex Evolution sheet extrusion system, a complete production line for use in sheeting, winding and in-line thermoforming, and equipped with the XLS Navigator control. The equipment at NPE will be for thin-gauge applications, but Evolution can be customized for widths from 39 inches to 90 inches and gauges from 0.008 to 0.125 inches., and throughputs of up to 10,000 pounds an hour.
• American Kuhne ULTRA extruders with expanded features, showing a 2.5-inch unit equipped with a XC100 Navigator control and a 3.5-inch machine with an XC200 control. The company has made improvements to allow for simple maintenance and accessibility, including barrel covers slowing for easy access to barrel heaters and thermocouples, and an automotive-style wiring harness with quick-change plugs for routing wiring and thermocouples between the electrical cabinet to the barrel heater/cooling zones.
• An American Kuhne tri-layer medical tubing line, including modular micro-extruders.
• An American Kuhne AKcent coextruder, a customized system that is available in fixed horizontal versions or units that can be fully tilted from horizontal to vertical. An EZ-Tilt feature makes angular adjustments quick and easy.
