How do you economically produce thin-walled containers using top-quality recycled material and with maximum output? By having several specialists combine their well-founded expertise. This is what has happened in France as part of the Thin Wall Integra collaborative project. The collaboration pursues several objectives simultaneously, namely the high-volume processing of recycled material into thin-walled containers in a way that is fully automated, fast, and of a consistently high quality.
Arburg’s subsidiary in France has teamed up with Collomb, a mould maker specialising in thin-walled containers, Pagès Group, a robotics expert for packaging, Verstraete, an IML label manufacturer, Koch-Technik, a material flow specialist, and Borealis, a raw materials supplier, to present Thin Wall Integra as a new one-stop shop concept for the production of thin-walled five-litre buckets.
Jointly developed concept
The jointly developed concept is based on a fully automated injection moulding cell around a hybrid Allrounder 720 H in packaging version with a 1-cavity mould. The complete cycle only takes around five seconds. In addition to the injection moulding machine optimised for fast cycles, the sequentially operating robotic system is also a top performer. The handling system with telescopic arm that engages from the rear side of the machine first loads the mould with the IML labels. The robotic system then removes the labelled buckets and stacks them on a deposit mat. The stacks are then automatically picked up by a robot for palletising. The two robot technologies used make the system particularly compact. The recyclate is continuously fed in via an automatic conveyor system.
