New system for managing PET bottle crystallinity

Agr International offers a number of products that are designed to aid bottle manufacturers achieve their most aggressive light weighting goals while maintaining the highest quality.  Agr products assist container producers, converters and fillers stay competitive while meeting the increased quality demands of today’s changing world. At K 2016, Agr will display its latest developments in this line of products as well as an array of quality management and process control equipment for plastic containers.

Process Pilot
The Process Pilot® automated blowmolder management system is designed to help PET bottle manufacturers measure, control and optimize their bottle blowing process in order to produce the highest quality, best performing bottles possible while maximizing production efficiency.  The Process Pilot system interfaces with the blowmolder to provide precise material thickness distribution on a per bottle basis while managing the blowmolder to eliminate the effect of process and environmental variables that impact bottle material distribution throughout the production cycle. With the trend towards ever lighter bottles, the Process Pilot system is the ultimate light-weighting tool.  This system offers bottle producers the ability to aggressively light weight bottles to the absolute minimum, while providing the confidence that material is distributed appropriately. The Process Pilot system makes it possible to produce consistent high-quality bottles on a 24/7 basis regardless of operator skills, environmental changes and preform variations.  The Process Pilot system has proven to help bottle producers optimize their bottle production process and realize the full savings potential of their light weighting projects as a result of reduced material and energy consumption, higher overall quality and significantly improved production efficiencies.  

Enhancing crystallinity of PET bottles
Agr is set to present the latest enhancement to the Process Pilot product line - the CrystalView material optimization system.   The CrystalView system provides PET bottle manufacturers with the means for automatic management of material orientation/crystallinity.  The CrystalView system works in conjunction with the Agr Process Pilot blowmolder management system to simultaneously manage material distribution and optimize material orientation.   By doing so, material orientation is optimized over the entire bottle, making it possible to produce the best possible bottles at the coldest practical processing temperature.

Automated lab test cell
The Automated Laboratory Test Cell for plastic bottles and preforms will also be presented at K 2016. The Test Cell provides an automated solution that tightly integrates multiple testing operations, including thickness, dimensional, topload, volume and pressure, with a precision pick and place industrial robot.  Selection, handling and transfer of samples through the multiple test stations is fully optimized and performed quickly and efficiently by the multi-axis robot.  Test results from each testing station are compiled with data correlated by sample and consolidated in a single test report. The laboratory test cell offers a solution to meeting the challenges of over-worked testing labs and the ever increasing demand for sampling and testing to manage quality and support ongoing production.  In addition to organizing and consolidating critical testing operations in one compact area, the system offers a number of benefits including hands-free, walk-away operation, efficient management of samples, testing operations and documentation of results, and, most significantly, an improvement in testing throughput of as much as 300%.