Blow Molding Machines for PC Water Bottles

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1 Blow Molding Machines for PC Water Bottles KPC Series

2 Blow Molding Machines for PC Water Bottles 1 2 Kautex Maschinenbau provides its customers with globally leading solutions in terms of quality, technology and service. Water dispensers for cold or hot drinking water have become a familiar fixture in many offices, shops, waiting rooms and even private households. The large water bottles, usually for 5 gallons or 20 liters, are produced in different designs, with or without handle, and from different materials, depending on the requirements. The heavy glass bottles that were customary years ago are increasingly being replaced by lighter plastic bottles made of polycarbonate (PC) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET), in rare cases also polypropylene (PP) and polyvinylchloride (PVC). As early as in the 1970s, Kautex Maschinenbau established the processing technology in cooperation with a raw material supplier and then developed extrusion blow molding machines for the production of PC water bottles. Benefits of PC While PET bottles are produced using a stretch blow molding process, PC bottles are extrusion blow molded. Although the price of PC resin is higher than that of PET resin, the production of PC bottles has turned out to be the more economical solution with greater bottle design flexibility. With relatively low capital investment and output rates of up to 140 bottles per hour per cavity, the extrusion blow molding process provides high-quality PC water bottles at very attractive costs. calibrated lost head image 1/2/3 large design freedom for extrusion blow molded water bottles 3 blow pin tip blow pin tip 2

3 Another advantage of the PC bottles is their dimensional stability after multiple washing cycles thanks to the high temperature resistance of the material. Since PC is also much more scratch resistant than PET, the bottles suffer less damage in use so that they can be reused times while a PET bottle must be replaced after about cycles. Additionally, the extrusion blow molding process offers decisive benefits due to a virtually unlimited design freedom in terms of bottle geometry and easy incorporation of handles. Polycarbonat water bottles in different sizes 3

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5 Kautex Maschinenbau technology for PC water bottles With its more than 30 years of experience in extrusion blow molding of PC water bottles, Kautex Maschinenbau is in a position to offer a proven machine design for high quality water bottles meeting today s stringent requirements. The KPC model blow molder shares the same design principles used by Kautex Maschinenbau in its KBS series industrial blow molding machines, featuring a closed, distortion-free, rigid frame and hydraulically operated clamping unit. PC bottles produced on Kautex Maschinenbau equipment stand out with an excellent surface finish, transparency and high gloss as well as by their superb sealing surfaces at the neck. A downstream annealing process reduces molded-in stresses at the bottom and shoulder pinchoff areas minimizing the tendency of stress cracking and ensuring the long-term dimensional stability of the bottles. This ensures a precise shape of the inner neck contour. A separately driven calibrating sleeve forms the outer neck contour after mold closure. Unlike a fully blown neck, the internally and externally calibrated neck is completely finished inside the mold eliminating the need for postmolding operations. This neck design results in a perfectly flat and smooth sealing surface ensuring a leak-free connection between bottle and dispenser. An integrated deflashing device permits the removal of shoulder and bottom flash inside the machine. After deflashing, the articles exit the machine via a chute. As an alternative, Kautex Maschinenbau offers a bottle inverter, which places the bottles neck up on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt advances bottles downstream to a continuous infrared annealing oven. image 1 Blow molding machine KPC with material handling and continuous infrared annealing oven image 2 complex neck- and handle geometry, free of folds realised with prior PC-simulation PC water bottles can be produced on KPC machines with customer-supplied blow molds using conventional top blowing followed by manual or semi-automatic deflashing outside of the machine (blow and drop). High-quality and tight tolerance neck finishes are achieved with a KPC equipment option available from Kautex Maschinenbau. In this case, the PC water bottles are blown from below with a calibrating blow pin. 5

6 Die Head and Extruder Polycarbonat water bottles in different sizes The die head and extruder of the KPC machines are made from specialty steels that permit a processing of polycarbonate at high throughputs with minimal polymer degradation and exhibit excellent purging behavior. Extruder The high-performance extruder with a 90mm screw diameter and an effective screw length of 25D is especially designed for processing high impact-resistant PC grades. Based on its many years of experience in designing and building extrusion blow molding machines, Kautex Maschinenbau has developed a special screw design and feed zone geometry, which ensure optimum homogeneity of the plastic melt. Consistent feeding of plastic pellets and maintaining a constant screw torque make for short cycles and excellent bottle quality. 6

7 The whole World of Extrusion Blow Molding In addition to special blow molding machines for the production of PC water bottles, Kautex Maschinenbau offers its customers Shuttle blow molding machines for the production of smaller technical parts and packaging containers with capacities ranging from a few ml to 30 liters Industrial blow molding machines for the production of technical parts, plastic fuel tanks (PFT) and large industrial containers of up to 10,000 liters capacity 1 2 Special 3D blow molding machines for the minimum-flash production of three-dimensional convoluted tubular shapes for use in automobiles or household appliances Turnkey systems can be provided for all blow molding machines, from material preparation through article finishing, quality control, filling up to palletizing. Image 1 canister Image 2 Plastic fuel tank (PFT) 3 Die head The 3.5-liter accumulator head with overlapping heartshaped flow curves has been designed for the rheological properties of polycarbonate and permits an even wall thickness distribution of the parison which contributes to an extremely uniform high quality bottle. Image 3 three-dimensional, convoluted pipe 7

8 Kautex Maschinenbau GmbH Ufficio di Rappresentanza per l'italia Via Carlo Ferrari Olgiate Olona (VA) Italy Phone / Fax: Kautex Machines Inc. 201 Chambers Brook Road North Branch, NJ USA Phone: Fax: Shunde Kautex Plastics Technology Co., Ltd. Lunjiao Industrial District, Shunde Foshan, Guangdong PR China Phone: Fax: Kautex Maschinenbau GmbH Shanghai Office Shanghai Universal Mansion Room 2208, No Yu Yuan Road Shanghai China Phone: Fax: Kautex Maschinenbau GmbH Kautexstraße 54 D Bonn, Germany Phone Fax KPC/GB/6/2005